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THE  BOOK  WAS 
DRENCHED 


CO  >  CO 

66989 


OUP— 43—30.1.7)— 5,000 


OSMANIA  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 

**«»-•*  £ 


Gall  No.         ft  3&  &  Accession  No. 

Author  tfa&m*   2-   V 


This  booxrfiould  be  returned  on  or  before  the  date  last  marked  below 


boo^xrfi 


READER 


jiarrison  jiayjord  •  NORTHWESTERN  UNIVERSITY     and 

•  WITH  DRAWINGS  BY  W.     B.     SCOTT 


and  WRITER 


IP.     l/incewt  -  ILLINOIS  INSTITUTE  OF  TECHNOLOGY 

HOUGHTON    MlFFLIN    COMPANY      •      BOSTON 
ftbe  SUberafoe  $re**  CambrOise 


COPYRIGHT  1954  BY  HARRISON  HAYFORD  AND 
HOWARD  P.  VINCENT.  ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED.  THE 
SELECTIONS  REPRINTED  IN  THIS  COLLECTION  ARE 
USED  BY  PERMISSION  OF  AND  SPECIAL  ARRANGE- 
MENT WITH  THE  PROPRIETORS  OF  THEIR  RESPEC- 
TIVE COPYRIGHTS. 


$re** 

CAMBRIDGE,    MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED  IN  THE  U.S.A. 


Preface 


THIS  BOOK  is  offered  in  the  belief  that  the  main  business  of  freshman 
English  is  reading  and  writing,  and  that  these  ends  are  best  served  when 
the  technology  of  language  and  its  human  aims  are  considered  as  one.  In 
recent  years  there  have  been  two  marked  trends  in  freshman  anthologies. 
One  has  been  to  center  attention  on  the  'life  problems"  of  the  student,  and 
the  other  has  been  to  concentrate  on  matters  of  rhetoric.  We  believe  that 
the  first  of  these  approaches  encourages  the  student  to  neglect  his  practical 
needs  as  a  reader  and  as  a  writer,  and  that  the  second  makes  the  readings 
so  ancillary  to  strategy  and  drill  that  it  runs  the  danger  of  draining  their 
vitality  away.  This  book  attempts  to  wed  the  best  in  these  two  methods, 
and  at  the  same  time  to  keep  the  focus  squarely  where  we  think  it  belongs: 
on  reading  and  writing,  and  on  language  and  thinking  as  they  are  inex- 
tricably bound  up  with  both. 

In  the  belief  that  reading  and  writing,  as  subjects,  should  not  be  sep- 
arated either  from  humanistic  values  or  from  technical  considerations,  we 
have  designed  this  book  to  fuse  the  practical  and  the  literary,  the  techno- 
logical and  the  humanistic  —  to  bring  into  efficient  harmony  the  everyday 
needs  of  students  with  their  interests.  Reading  and  writing  are  interactive 
process  and  result.  Unlike  the  passive  radio  receiver,  the  reader  responds 
to  what  he  receives  and  changes  it.  He  analyzes  what  is  sent  to  him,  even 
if  badly;  and  ideally  he  responds  to  how  it  is  sent  —  he  writes  in  his  turn. 
By  fusing  the  what  and  the  how,  Reader  and  Writer  should  help  to  make 
the  reading  process  active,  and  in  so  doing  should  educate  the  writing- 
sending  powers  to  greater  effectiveness. 

This  sharpened  sense  of  the  aims  of  freshman  English  should  make  it 
easy  for  the  instructor  to  relate  this  book  closely  and  effectively  to  the 
handbook  or  rhetoric  used  in  the  course,  supplementing  the  details  of 
grammar  and  mechanics  by  putting  them  to  work  in  a  significant  context. 
To  this  end,  headnotes  lead  the  student  into  the  reading  and  writing  prob- 
lems which  the  selections  present,  and  are  a  connective  tissue  to  articulate 
the  book.  Questions  and  theme  suggestions  are  further  aids  in  rhetoric, 
vocabulary,  and  comprehension.  They  have  been  placed  at  the  end  of  the 
book,  where  they  will  be  out  of  the  way  of  the  teacher  who  prefers  to 
develop  his  own.  There  is  also  an  alternate  table  of  contents,  by  literary 
types  and  purposes  in  writing,  and  a  check  list  of  selections  particularly 
suited  to  the  study  of  such  topics  as  outlining,  paragraph  structure,  sentence 
structure,  and  rhetorical  devices. 

The  focus  on  reading  and  writing  has  made  it  possible  to  give  each  selec- 


vi  Preface 

tion  what  might  be  called  an  organic  setting.  In  each  of  the  book's  twenty- 
three  sections,  pieces  in  several  genres  are  clustered  round  a  central  theme 
or  problem.  It  has  thus  been  possible  to  illustrate  the  almost  infinite  variety 
which  is  possible  in  tl^e  handling  of  themes  and  ideas  by  different  minds 
working  from  different  points  of  view.  Prose  and  verse,  story  and  essay, 
report  and  argument,  are  grouped  in  terms  of  subject  where,  at  first,  they 
can  be  made  most  meaningful  to  students.  We  believe  that  the  subtle,  sig- 
nificant relationship  between  craft  and  content,  technique  and  subject,  is 
best  studied  when  a  single  subject  is  seen  through  different  minds  and 
eyes,  from  different  intentions,  and  is  manipulated  in  different  styles  and 
strategies.  Journalists  see  (hence  write)  differently  from  poets,  poets  from 
essayists,  essayists  from  short  story  writers,  story  writers  from  scholars;  and 
all  these  (perhaps)  differently  from  students.  It  is  a  valuable  lesson  to 
learn  that  the  psychologist's  view  of  the  family  differs  from  the  poet's,  and 
that  each  is  just  as  valid,  in  its  way,  as  the  educator's,  the  sociologist's,  or 
the  short  story  writer's.  It  is  useful  through  this  multiplicity  of  genres  and 
approaches  to  learn  that  "reality,"  which  each  seeks  to  capture,  is  elusive 
and  complex,  and  each  can  capture  but  a  part  of  it.  For  freshmen,  many 
of  them  making  their  first  foray  into  writing  through  reading  and  thinking, 
it  should  be  illuminating  to  learn  that  there  are  many  ways  of  saying  a 
thing,  and  that  this  truth  has  close  application  to  their  own  writing. 

Our  sequence  is  not  sacred,  and  many  teachers  will  find  a  different  one 
more  suitable  to  their  purpose.  As  we  have  said,  the  alternate  table  of 
contents  by  types,  and  the  check  list  of  selections  most  suitable  for  analysis 
in  the  study  of  writing  principles,  will  be  of  great  service  to  instructors  who 
prefer  one  of  those  approaches,  either  in  place  of  our  grouping  or  as  an 
occasional  supplement  to  it.  Moreover,  within  each  section  there  is  abun- 
dance, and  the  teacher  need  not  require  every  item  in  order  to  reach  impor- 
tant conclusions  about  a  general  topic.  The  organization  of  the  book  also 
provides  a  rough  gauge  of  difficulty,  for  within  each  section  the  pieces  are 
arranged  from  easy  to  difficult,  and  in  a  more  general  way,  the  same  is  true 
of  the  sections  and  parts.  The  book  is  strictly  organized,  but  not  confining. 

Finally,  let  us  repeat:  Reader  and  Writer  attempts  more  openly  than 
has  been  done  before  to  bring  together  the  major  language  problems  as 
such  —  the  problems  of  reading,  writing,  and  thinking  —  with  the  literary 
and  ideational  interests  of  teachers  and  students.  We  hope  and  believe 
that  the  practical  aims  are  thus  made  more  attractive,  that  the  intellectual 
voyaging  is  given  immediate  goals.  The  technology  of  language  and  its 
humanistic  aims  are  made  one  —  increasing,  we  feel,  the  efficiency  of  each. 

HARRISON  HAYFORD 
HOWARD  P.  VINCENT 


Lontents 


PART  ONE    Reader 

Reading  as  Pleasure  and  'Work 

Advertisement,  The  Greatest  Pleasure  in  Life  3 

Paul  D.  Leedy,  How  to  Read  More  Efficiently  5 

Mortimer  J.  Adler,  How  to  Mark  a  Book  10 

Francis  Bacon,  Of  Studies  14 

Lin  Yutang,  The  Art  of  Reading  15 

John  Ciardi,  What  Does  It  Take  to  Enjoy  a  Poem?  20 

Marianne  Moore,  Poetry  28 

Some  Readers  at  "Work 

James  Thurber,  Here  Lies  Miss  Groby  30 

W.  B.  Scott,  Clutter  Counters  Everywhere  33 

Frank  O'Connor,  The  Idealist  36 

John  Keats,  On  First  Looking  into  Chapman's  Homer  43 

Readers  and  College  Life 

Roger  W.  Holmes,  What  Every  Freshman  Should  Know  '   44 

Robert  Benchley,  What  College  Did  to  Me  51 

Mrs.  Glenn  Frank,  Heartache  on  the  Campus  55 

Geoffrey  Gorer,  Dating  in  America  62 

Sir  Bernard  Mosher,  A  Student  at  His  Book  66 

Samuel  H.  Scudder,  A  Great  Teacher's  Method  67 

James  Bryant  Conant,  The  University  70 

John  Holmes,  The  Bells  Rang  Every  Hour  80 

Karl  Shapiro,  University  82 

Thomas  Gray,  Ode  on  a  Distant  Prospect  of  Eton  College  84 


vtii  Contents 

PART  TWO    Writer 

The  Writer's  lob 

Stephen  Leacock,  Anybody  Can  Learn  to  Write  89 

H.  A.  Overstreet,  The  Psychology  of  Effective  Writing  93 

Jonathan  Swift,  A  Writing  Machine  95 

John  Mason  Brown,  Pleasant  Agony  97 

Jacques  Barzun,  How  to  Write  and  Be  Read  101 

Herman  Melville,  Art  111 

William  Butler  Yeats,  Adams  Curse  111 

Sir  Philip  Sidney,  Look  in  Thy  Heart  and  Write  113 

The  "Writer's  Aims 

Sherwood  Anderson,  Two  Letters  on  Writing  114 

Ernest  Hemingway,  Why  I  Wrote  About  Bullfights  119 

Robert  Browning,  "To  Find  Its  Meaning"  122 

A.  E.  Housman,  "Terence,  This  Is  Stupid  Stuff'9  123 

William  Shakespeare,  Sonnet  55  125 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples 

1.  BEGINNING  WITH  TALK 

William  Hazlitt,  On  the  Differences  Between  Writing 

and  Speaking  126 

Bess  Sondel,  Everybody's  Listening!  131 

James  Boswell,  Dr.  Johnson  Converses  on  Composition  135 

Benjamin  Franklin,  On  Disputing  137 

Ring  Lardner,  On  Conversation  138 

2.  WRITING  LETTERS 

Charles  Dickens,  Sam  Wetter  s  Valentine  140 

Herman  Melville,  Two  Letters  145 

Jay  Leyda,  Miss  Emily's  Maggie  150 

John  Holmes,  The  Letter  161 


Contents  ix 

3.  SHAPING  IDEAS 

Rudolf  Flesch,  The  Shape  of  Ideas  162 

Student  Paper,  Notes  for  a  Portrait  of  Dummy  Flagg  170 

Richard  C.  Blakeslee,  Revising  a  Theme  173 

Henry  David  Thoreau,  Thoughts  on  Composition  176 

John  Holmes,  Talk  178 

4.  GIVING  THE  FACTS 

S.  I.  Hayakawa,  The  Language  of  Reports  181 

Chicago  Daily  News,  How  Propaganda  Finds  Its  Way 

Into  the  Press  185 

Ken  Macrorie,  World's  Best  Directions  Writer  190 

Grace  Brown,  The  One-Egg  Cake  195 

Sydney  Smith,  Winter  Salad  196 

5.  GIVING  SIGNIFICANCE 

David  Daiches,  The  Literary  Use  of  Language  197 

Howard  P.  Vincent,  Melville  Writes  of  the  Whale-Line  200 

William  March,  A  Sum  in  Addition  203 

John  Ciardi,  On  a  Photo  of  Sgt.  Ciardi  a  Year  Later  205 


PART  THREE    The  Arch  of  Experience 

Jn  and  'Beyond  the  family 

Alfred  Adler,  The  Family  Constellation  209 

Edgar  Lee  Masters,  At  Grandmothers  215 

Clarence  Day,  Father  Tries  to  Make  Mother  Like  Figures  218 

Crary  Moore,  Good-bye,  Little  Sister  222 

Sherwood  Anderson,  Brother  Death  227 

Walt  Whitman,  There  Was  a  Child  Went  Forth  239 

Constance  Carrier,  Peter  at  Fourteen  241 

Robert  P.  Tristram  Coffin,  The  Secret  Heart  242 

Emily  Dickinson,  Returning  243 

Gerard  Manley  Hopkins,  Spring  and  Fall  244 


x  Contents 

Self  and  Others 

William  James,  On  a  Certain  Blindness  in  Human  Beings  245 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  John  and  Thomas  248 

Lloyd  Lewis,  The  Secret  Evangel  of  Otto  McFeely  249 

Katherine  Mansfield,  A  Dill  Pickle  251 

Edwin  Arlington  Robinson,  Richard  Cory  257 

Robert  Browning,  My  Last  Duchess  257 

William  Butler  Yeats,  For  Anne  Gregory  259 

A  Number  of  Things 

Graham  Hutton,  Midwestern  Weather  260 

Editors  of  Fortune,  Riveters  266 

Paul  Gallico,  The  Feel  267 

George  Orwell,  Shooting  an  Elephant  275 

Dorothy  Baker,  Rick  Discovers  Jazz  281 

Walt  Whitman,  from  Song  of  Myself  291 


PART  FOUR    The  Ways  of  Thought 

The  Mind's  Ways 

John  Dewey,  Language  and  the  Training  of  Thought  297 

James  Harvey  Robinson,  Four  Kinds  of  Thinking     ^  308 

James  Thurber,  The  Secret  Life  of  Walter  Mitty  316 

Jules  H.  Masserman,  Experimental  Neuroses  320 

E.  B.  White,  The  Door  329 

Emily  Dickinson,  Much  Madness  Is  Divinest  Sense  333 

Emily  Dickinson,  The  Brain  Within  Its  Groove  333 

Some  Logicians  at  "Work 

Robert  Gorham  Davis,  Logic  and  Logical  Fallacies  334 

T.  H.  Huxley,  We  Are  All  Scientists  343 

Jonathan  Swift,  A  Modest  Proposal  349 


Contents  ri 

Russell  Maloney,  Inflexible  Logic  356 

Andrew  Marvell,  To  His  Coy  Mistress  362 

'Beyond  Logic 

Walter  B.  Cannon,  The  Role  of  Hunches  364 

John  Livingston  Lowes,  Imagination  Creatrfa  371 

Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  Kubla  Khan  375 

C.  Day  Lewis,  How  a  Poem  Is  Made  377 

May  Sarton,  Dialogue  382 


Pitfalls  of  Th 

S.  I.  Hayakawa,  Symbols  383 

Bergen  Evans,  Wolf!  Wolf!  390 
Gordon  W.  Allport,  Prejudice:  A  Sickness  of  Individuals 

and  Society  395 

William  Faulkner,  Dry  September  401 

John  Godfrey  Saxe,  The  Blind  Men  and  the  Elephant  410 

Walker  Gibson,  The  Umpire  411 

freedom  for  Thought 

Northwestern  University  Reviewing  Stand,  God  and  Man 

in  the  Universities  413 


PART  FIVE    The  Ways  of  Language 

The  Life  of  Language 

Edward  Sapir,  The  Social  Functions  of  Language  427 

Albert  H.  Marckwardt,  What  Is  Good  English?  430 

Dwight  L.  Bolinger,  The  Life  and  Death  of  Words  435 

Samuel  L.  Clemens,  Buck  Fanshaw's  Funeral  445 

Bernard  De  Voto,  The  Third  Floor  451 


xii  Contents 

"Vices  and  Virtues  of  Style 

William  Hazlitt,  On  Familiar  Style  458 
William  B.  Hale,  The  Style  of  Woodrow  Wilson  at  Twenty-two      464 

Samuel  T.  Williamson,  How  to  Write  Like  a  Social  Scientist  468 

Frank  Sullivan,  The  Cliche  Expert  Testifies  on  the  Atom  472 

Elinor  Goulding  Smith,  Story  for  the  Slicks  478 

William  Shakespeare,  My  Mistress'  Eyes  482 

Some  CNice  'Derangements  o/  Language 

Lewis  Carroll,  Humpty  Dumpty  on  Words  483 

Edith  Wharton,  Henry  James  Gives  and  Asks  Directions  491 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  The  Pun  Question  493 
Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan,  Mrs.  Malaprops  Diabolical 

Instruments  of  Knowledge  495 
Arthur  Kober,  The  Guy  Is  Sittiri  There,  See,  Hangin 

with  His  Tongue  Out  498 

Lewis  Carroll,  Jabberwocky  504 

PART  six    The  Mobilized  Word 

The  'Mass  JWedia  and  Maturity 

Wilbur  Schramm,  A  Brief  Chronology  of  Mass  Communications  507 

H.  A.  Overstreet,  What  We  Read,  See,  and  Hear  509 

David  L.  Cohn,  Moonlight  and  Poison  Ivy  523 

Gilbert  Seldes,  The  Art  of  Licking  527 

Robert  Graham,  Adman's  Nightmare:  Is  the  Prune  a  Witch?  532 

Rolfe  Humphries,  The  Doubtcaster  541 

Toward  Democratic  Responsibility 

Frank  Luther  Mott,  The  Responsibilities  of  the  Newspaper  Reader  544 

Al  Capp,  It's  Hideously  True  551 

A.  R.  Fulton,  It's  Different  from  the  Book  556 

STUDY  QUESTIONS  AND  THEME  TOPICS  565 

TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  BY  KINDS  OF  WRITING  587 
A  SUPPLEMENTARY  CHECK  LIST  OF  TITLES  PARTICULARLY  USEFUL 

FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  IMPORTANT  RHETORICAL  PRINCIPLES  592 

INDEX  OF  TITLES  AND  AUTHORS  594 


Part 


READER 


WHATEVER  WE  DO,  wherever  we  go,  we  are  never  independent  of  the  writ- 
ten word  for  very  long.  A  headline  tells  us  that  "Disaster  Strikes  Texas 
City."  The  billboard  and  the  streetcar  ad  urge  us  to  "Buy  Snelling's  Soap" 
or  "Visit  Slippery  Rock."  We  are  adjured  to  "Close  Cover  Before  Striking," 
"Shake  Well  Before  Using,"  "Open  This  End,"  and  "Ask  the  Man  Who 
Owns  One."  We  can't  even  start  a  car  without  being  reminded  that  one 
dial  registers  "gallons,"  another  "miles  per  hour,"  a  third  "amperes"  and  a 
fourth  "temperature."  Imagine  what  it  would  be  like  if  suddenly  all  these 
words  were  erased  and  we  stared  out  at  blank  surfaces!  We  are  all  readers, 
and  we  couldn't  function  in  a  civilized  society  if  we  weren't. 

But  all  this  is  "subsistence"  reading.  To  enjoy  the  "comforts"  and  "lux- 
uries" we  have  to  be  readers  on  higher  levels,  too.  Success  in  college 
demands  knowledge  of  fact  and  grasp  of  idea,  much  of  it  through  the 
written  word.  It  is  shocking  but  true  that  through  no  defect  of  native  in- 
telligence, some  students  have  to  spend  two  or  three  times  as  long  on  any 
given  page,  chapter,  or  book  as  others  do.  And  more  times  than  not  the 
slow  reader  struggles  painfully  and  comes  away  from  his  task  with  only  a 
vague  or  garbled  notion  of  what  he  has  read.  To  read  competently  is  to 
grasp  another's  central  meaning  in  proper  relation  to  its  parts,  and  thus  to 
have  a  view  of  the  whole,  very  much  as  one  understands  the  parts  of  an 
automobile  in  relation  to  the  whole  machine,  or  the  members  of  a  team  in 
relation  to  the  game  they  play.  This  is  the  kind  of  reading  we  do  in  text 


2  Reader 

and  reference  books,  in  magazine  articles,  in  anything  from  which  we  want 
information,  ideas,  or  opinions.  Because  we  read  this  way  not  only  in  col- 
lege but  all  our  lives,  it  is  urgently  important  that  we  do  it  as  well  as  we 
can. 

Beyond  this  kind  of  reading  —  which  we  may  call  technological  —  is  yet 
another  kind.  Do  you  find  a  pleasure  in  words,  in  their  precision  and  their 
sensitivity?  There  are  many  people  who  savor  them  as  a  gourmet  savors 
food  or  an  athlete  enjoys  his  game.  Do  you  appreciate  word  structures? 
Do  you  agree,  for  instance,  with  Winston  Churchill  that  the  English  sen- 
tence is  a  noble  thing?  Do  you  find  books  a  door  to  truth,  a  road  to  under- 
standing? Do  you  find  them  a  source  of  comfort  and  pleasure?  If  you  can 
answer  yes  to  any  of  these  questions,  you  are  to  that  extent  a  "reader." 
The  selections  in  the  following  pages  will  tell  you  why  this  is  true  —  and 
what  it  can  mean  for  you. 


Reading  as  Pleasure 
and  Work 


"Any  questions  on  this 
paragraph?99 


The  Greatest  Pleasure 
in  Life     **• 


This  little  essay  was  written  to  persuade  people  to  join  a  book  club. 
It  is  a  model  of  composition  that  mocks  itself  by  its  rhetorical  precision, 
at  the  same  time  that  it  really  means  what  it  says.  Notice  how  a  genuine 
feeling  underlies  the  arguments  for  reading,  even  while  they  are  humor- 
ously overstated. 

THERE  is  A  GREAT  DEAL,  to  be  said  for  sex.  Nature  has  been  wise  to  people  the 
world  with  only  two  sexes,  officially.  What  would  we  have  done  with  a 
third  sex,  how  might  it  not  have  interfered  with  our  pleasures!  When  a 
member  of  the  male  sex  and  a  member  of  the  female  sex  look  upon  each 
other,  and  find  each  other  good  to  look  upon,  how  pleasurable  is  the  glow 
which  suffuses  their  bosoms!  With  what  deeply  felt  joy  does  each  go 
through  the  painful  process  of  presenting  that  most  vital  of  organs,  the 
heart,  to  the  other!  In  what  a  luxury  of  ecstasy  does  each  write  tender  mis- 
sives to  the  other!  Enveloped  in  what  cozy  hedonism,  does  each  receive 
messages  conveying  the  other's  regard!  The  presence  of  sex  in  the  world 

Reprinted  by  permission  from  an  advertisement  written  by  George  Macy  for  The 
Readers'  Club. 


4  Reader 

produces  that  tender  emotion,  love,  which  is  one  of  our  most  luscious  de- 
lights. To  touch  the  lips  of  one's  loved  one,  to  encase  one's  loved  one  in 
one's  arms,  these  are  great  pleasures  indeed.  There  is  much  to  be  said  foi 
sex. 

There  is  much  also  to  be  said^r  sports.  When  you  go  to  bat  against  the 
opposing  pitcher,  and  you  take  tf  deep  lusty  swing  at  the  ball,  and  you  hear 
the  crack  of  the  bat  meeting  the  ball,  and  you  see  the  ball  sailing  far  over 
the  center-field  fence,  this  is  a  moment  of  tangible  pleasure.  When  the  op- 
posing eleven  is  leading  by  seven  to  six,  and  there  are  twenty  seconds  to 
play,  and  the  ball  is  in  the  possession  of  your  team  on  the  ten-yard  line,  and 
you  drop  back  for  a  placement  kick  which  will  win  the  game,  and  you  make 
good  the  placement  kick  which  does  win  the  game,  this  is  a  moment  of 
tingling  felicity.  When  your  ball  is  twenty  feet  from  the  cup,  and  the  green 
is  rough,  so  that  the  ball  must  take  three  deliberate  hops  before  it  reaches 
the  cup,  what  is  your  state  of  beatitude  as  you  watch  the  ball  drop  into  the 
cup!  These  are  pleasures  to  be  derived  only  from  sports.  There  is  a  great 
deal  to  be  said  for  sports. 

One  must  not  forget  that  there  is  a  great  deal  to  be  said  for  drinking.  To 
stand  up  at  the  bar,  swapping  yarns  with  the  bartender  and  the  other  bar- 
flies, talking  man's  talk  and  comporting  oneself  generally  in  mannish  fashion, 
this  is  a  pleasure  which  is  yet  only  the  beginning  of  happiness.  For  you 
watch  your  drink  being  mixed  and  you  hear  the  genial  tinkle  of  the  ice  in 
the  glass  and  you  feel  your  mouth  suddenly  grown  dry;  then  you  pour  the 
drink  down  your  throat,  wetting  your  mouth,  warming  your  throat,  rousing 
your  innards;  this  is  an  entertainment  of  the  senses  closely  approaching 
upon  sensual  bliss.  Then  you  look  out  of  the  corner  of  your  eye  at  the  ladies 
wistfully  waiting  at  the  door,  waiting  for  the  hour  to  strike  when  they  are 
permitted  into  the  bar,  when  they  are  permitted  to  talk  man's  talk  and  com- 
port themselves  generally  in  mannish  fashion;  and,  egged  on  by  the  spirits 
already  inside  you,  you  find  yourself  buried  in  beatitude.  There  is  much  to 
be  said  for  drinking. 

But  there  is  a  great  deal  to  be  said  against  sex,  and  against  sports,  against 
drinking!  Love  is  not  always  pleasure!  Misunderstandings  bring  misery  in 
their  wake.  Hearts  may  grieve  and  break  into  such  small  pieces  that  the 
stomach  is  affected,  so  that  one  may  not  eat.  And  one  must  not  forget  the 
aftermath  of  bliss:  little  ones  brought  into  the  world,  nuisances  to  have  their 
diapers  changed,  brats  to  keep  one  awake  with  their  squalls  in  the  night. 
^Sports  are  not  always  pleasurable!  One  does  not  always  win,  one  often 
knows  the  grief  of  ignominious  defeat.  One  may  be  hit  with  a  pitched 
ball,  and  killed.  One  may  have  one's  neck  broken  in  a  scrimmage.  One  may 
be  beaned  by  a  golfer  who  was  too  lazy  to  cry  fore.  ^Drinking  is  not  always 
pleasurable!  One  may  drink  too  much,  one  may  then  quarrel  with  one's 
friend,  or  one's  best  girl,  or  one's  friend's  best  girl.  One  may  awake  in  the 
morning  . . .  f  No,  there  is  a  great  deal  to  be  said  against  sex,  there  is  a  great 
deal  to  be  said  against  sports,  there  is  a  great  deal  to  be  said  against  drinking. 


Reading  as  Pleasure  and  Work  5 

But  nothing  can  be  said  against  reading.  It  is  reading  which  is  the  great- 
est pleasure  in  life.  You  may  find  yourself  lonely,  deserted  by  the  world; 
in  books  you  will  find  companions:  noble  and  handsome  and  honorable 
men,  beautiful  and  desirable  and  desiring  women.  You  may  have  insomnia, 
and  find  yourself  unable  to  sleep;  there  are  books  containing  printed  words 
the  reading  of  which  is  guaranteed  to  put  you  to  sleep.  You  may  want  to 
know  how  to  win  friends  and  influence  people,  you  may  want  to  know  how 
to  build  a  yacht,  you  may  want  to  know  how  to  keep  your  account  books, 
you  may  want  to  know  how  to  cultivate  your  garden;  there  are  printed 
books  the  reading  of  which  will  give  you  any  kind  of  education  you  desire. 
You  may  long  for  the  sight  of  foreign  shores,  the  smells  of  foreign  peoples; 
there  are  books  to  whisk  you  miles  away:  books  the  reading  of  which  will 
fill  your  eyes  with  the  sight  of  foreign  shores,  fill  your  nostrils  with  the 
smells  of  foreign  peoples. 

Reading  will  educate  you.  Reading  will  entertain  you.  Reading  will 
broaden  your  mind,  reading  will  save  you  from  boredom.  There  is  no  other 
pleasure  in  life  which  is  so  full  of  immediate  satisfaction,  so  devoid  of  later 
regret.  Yes,  there  is  no  other  pleasure  in  life  which  can  always  be  looked 
upon,  in  retrospect,  with  equal  pleasure. 


How  to  Read  More 
Efficiently     &•          Paul  D.  Leedy 


All  scientific  studies  of  reading  habits  show  that  any  reader,  no 
matter  how  fast  or  slow  he  reads,  or  how  much  or  little  he  gets  from  his 
reading,  can  improve  both  his  rate  and  his  comprehension  by  conscious 
practice  of  the  sorts  of  techniques  Mr.  Leedy  recommends. 

FORMAL  READING  instruction  ceased  for  most  of  us  in  the  elementary  school. 
Through  the  upper  grades,  in  high  school,  in  college,  and  on  through  life 
the  world  has  assumed  that  we  knew  "how  to  read."  The  stark  and  awful 
truth  is  that  most  of  us  read  slowly,  laboriously,  and  inefficiently.  Few  peo- 
ple have  had  the  training  necessary  to  make  them  masters  of  the  skills  of 
reading.  Generally  we  crawl  along  the  printways  at  a  rate  of  one  hundred 
to  two  hundred  words  a  minute,  whereas  the  efficient  reader  ought  to  fly 

From  The  Wonderful  World  of  Books,  edited  by  Alfred  Stefferud.  Copyright,  1952, 
by  Alfred  Stefferud.  The  New  American  Library  of  World  Literature,  Inc.,  and  Hough- 
ton  Mifflin  Co.,  co-publishers. 


6  Reader 

at  six  hundred  to  a  thousand  words  a  minute,  and  remember  at  least  80  per 
cent  of  everything  that  he  has  read!  Check  yourself  against  these  specifica- 
tions for  the  first-rate  reader. 

This  chapter  will  suggest  a  few  simple  techniques  for  improving  your 
reading  skill.  Put  these  simple  suggestions  into  practice  and  watch  the 
results. 

First,  settle  clearly  in  your  own  mind  just  what  your  purpose  in  reading 
is.  Is  it  that  you  want  merely  a  rapid,  general  impression  and  a  surface 
view  of  the  text?  In  that  case  you  will  skim.  Or  do  you  wish  to  read  more 
carefully,  noting  the  facts  and  specific  details  in  order  to  recall  them  ac- 
curately later?  If  so,  you  will  read  rapidly  with  attention  to  details.  Per- 
haps you  may  wish  to  understand  clearly  the  more  complex  organization 
of  the  thought,  to  be  aware  of  every  shade  and  nuance  of  reasoning,  weigh- 
ing fact  against  fact,  and  to  form  an  opinion  on  the  basis  of  what  your  au- 
thor has  said.  This  calls  for  critical  reading.  By  its  very  nature  this  type  of 
reading  is  slower  and  most  exacting  in  its  demands  for  highly  developed 
reading  skills. 

In  general,  skimming  is  basic  to  most  other  types  of  reading.  It  is  the 
skill  that  gives  the  "airplane  view"  of  the  printed  page.  Too  many  of  us 
begin  to  read  without  first  trying  to  discover  the  lay  of  the  land  or  the 
topography  of  the  thought.  The  normal  procedure  is  to  begin  at  the  first 
word  of  the  first  paragraph  and  plod  through  to  the  last  word  in  the  final 
paragraph.  By  so  doing,  the  average  adult  feels  satisfied  and  congratulates 
himself  upon  "having  read  it  all." 

Nothing  could  be  farther  from  the  truth.  Most  of  us  think  that  when  we 
look  at  each  word  —  or  the  still  less  efficient  reader,  when  he  mumbles  each 
word  inwardly  to  himself  —  that  we  have  "read"  the  selection.  It  does  not 
trouble  us  that  frequently  we  have  lost  sight  of  the  organization  of  the 
selection  as  a  whole,  that  the  facts  are  jumbled  and  indistinct,  that  the  ma- 
terial does  not  stand  out  with  maplike  clearness,  nor  the  thought  in  bold 
relief. 

The  average  reader  is  not  aware  of  paragraph  divisions.  Before  you 
begin  to  read,  look  down  along  the  left-hand  margin  of  the  column  of  print. 
See  those  indentations? 

To  the  skilled  reader  each  indentation  indicates  the  beginning  of  a  new 
thought  development.  Try  reading  the  first  sentence  —  just  the  first  sen- 
tence only,  of  each  paragraph.  Drive  yourself  through  a  chapter  in  a  book, 
or  an  article  in  a  magazine,  reading  only  the  first  sentence  of  each  para- 
graph. Before  long  you  will  be  aware  that  this  procedure  is  making  a  great 
deal  of  sense;  that  the  thought  is  flowing  smoothly  and  progressively.  If 
the  first  sentence  does  not  make  sense,  try  the  concluding  sentence  of  the 
paragraph.  The  main  thing  is  to  go  on,  paragraph  after  paragraph,  merely 
skimming  the  surface,  like  a  dragonfly  skimming  over  the  surface  of  a  pool. 

When  you  have  finished  you  will  be  aware  of  two  things:  first,  you  will 
have  an  over-all  view  of  the  entire  selection  which  will  be  as  thrilling 


Reading  as  Pleasure  and  Work  1 

upon  first  experience  as  looking  out  over  an  expansive  countryside  from 
the  cabin  of  a  plane;  secondly,  you  will  be  aware  of  motion  —  the  on- 
ward, irresistible  surge  of  thought.  Until  many  people  have  had  this 
latter  experience,  that  of  a  conscious  awareness  that  they  were  read- 
ing thoughts  —  not  words  —  they  have  not  known  what  real  reading  isl 
Too  often  we  labor  a  lifetime  under  the  delusion  that  reading  words  is 
reading.  Words  are  merely  the  symbols  through  which  the  thought  of  the 
author  is  transferred  to  the  mind  of  the  reader.  The  skilled  reader  always 
recognizes  that  the  thought  flows  through  the  lines  of  print  as  a  message 
over  a  copper  wire.  The  wire  indeed  is  important,  but  far  more  so  is  the 
thought  that  it  conveys.  Read  with  only  one  question  in  the  background  of 
your  consciousness:  Does  this  make  sense?  If  it  does,  spur  yourself  on. 
More  thought  lies  ahead.  Speed  down  the  printways  after  it! 

Occasionally  you  will  find  a  writer  with  whom  this  method  of  skimming 
does  not  seem  to  bring  results.  Such  writers  are  the  more  difficult  ones  to 
read.  They  may  tuck  the  "key"  sentence  away  at  the  end  of  the  paragraph, 
or  hide  it  in  the  middle.  But  writers  usually  follow  a  consistent  pattern  of 
thought  development,  and  once  you  have  cracked  one  or  two  paragraphs 
and  understand  how  the  author  works,  all  the  others  will  likely  show  a 
similarity  of  structure  and  plan.  This  semblance  of  structure  we  call  an 
author's  "style." 

The  skimming  technique  you  may  object  to  as  being  very  superficial, 
and  so  it  is.  It  was  meant  to  be  nothing  else. 

"But,"  you  insist,  "I  want  to  read  with  more  thoroughness."  Good;  let 
us  go  back  to  the  beginning  and  read  the  chapter  again,  this  time  demon- 
strating the  technique  of  rapid  yet  careful  reading.  You  see,  everything 
depends  upon  the  purpose  you  have  in  reading.  Your  purpose  now  is  a 
more  inclusive,  a  more  serious  one.  You  seek  a  more  comprehensive  grasp 
of  the  written  word. 

At  this  point  you  plunge  into  the  forest.  Up  to  now  you  have  merely 
surveyed  its  general  extent  and  vastness,  and  noted  the  principal  land- 
marks. Now,  in  among  the  towering  trees  you  go.  Every  experienced 
woodsman  knows  that  there  is  a  right  and  wrong  way  to  go  into  the  woods. 
Just  so,  the  skilled  reader  recognizes  a  right  and  wrong  way  to  attack  a 
page  of  print.  What  is  the  first  step  toward  reading  more  comprehensively? 

First,  note  the  main  thought  of  the  paragraph.  This  is  exactly  what  you 
did  in  skimming.  Find  it  and  fix  it  firmly  and  clearly  in  your  mind.  In 
most  cases  it  will  be  the  first  sentence,  but  occasionally  it  may  occur  else- 
where. Do  not  attempt  to  memorize  the  words  of  the  author,  but  grasp  his 
central  thought.  See  if  you  can  immediately  rephrase  the  main  idea,  mainly 
in  your  own  words.  This  will  help  you  to  fix  the  thought  in  your  own  mind. 
Now,  with  the  thought  firmly  anchored  in  your  consciousness,  read  rapidly 
through  the  rest  of  the  paragraph  to  glean  contributory  ideas  which  ex- 
pand, explain,  or  enlarge  upon  the  main  thought.  This  is  what  teachers 
often  refer  to  as  the  "development  of  the  idea." 


8  Reader 

In  reading  rapidly  look  for  the  words  within  the  paragraph  that  express 
ideas  without  adding  unnecessary  detail.  Not  all  words  are  equally  im- 
portant. You  recognize  this  fact  when  you  send  a  telegram.  The  eye  sees 
instantaneously  much  more  than  the  mind  actually  "reads,"  and  there  are 
only  certain  words  within  each  sentence  that  the  mind  needs  to  dwell  upon 
to  get  the  thought  of  the  author.  For  example,  read  the  following: 

Get  the  habit  of  looking  for  the  significant,  meaningful  words  in  each  line  of 
print.  Frequently  they  are  few,  and  whereas  your  eyes  race  down  the 
crowded  printlanes,  your  mind  idles  because  it  need  not  digest  every  single, 
solitary  word  to  get  the  meaning. 

How  many  words  did  you  read?  There  are  44  words  in  that  selection, 
and  unless  you  are  a  skillful  reader,  you  probably  read  all  forty-four  of 
them.  Here,  however,  is  what  you  should  have  read: 

GET  HABIT  LOOKING  FOR  SIGNIFICANT  WORDS.  FREQUENTLY  FEW.  EYES  RACE 
THE  PRINTLANES,  MIND  IDLES.  NEED  NOT  DIGEST  EVERY  WORD  TO  GET  MEANING. 

You  have  lost  nothing  of  the  thought.  You  have  reduced  your  reading 
load  by  exactly  50  per  cent!  This  means  that  if  you  read  a  40,000-word 
treatise,  you  need  not  give  your  full  attention  to  each  one  of  the  40,000 
words.  While  you  see  all  of  them,  you  read  only  about  20,000  or  25,000. 
You  have  sacrificed  nothing  of  the  meaning,  you  have  merely  sloughed  off 
the  unimportant  verbiage.  Practice  this  telegraphic  reading.  It  is  one  of 
the  principal  secrets  to  reading  faster,  and  more  comprehensively. 

Always  check  your  reading  for  comprehension  of  the  facts.  This  is  most 
easily  done  by  your  telling  yourself  the  details  of  what  you  have  read.  See 
if  you  can.  Can  you  enumerate  the  points  in  the  order  in  which  the  author 
made  them?  Do  you  know  what  the  main  idea  of  the  first  paragraph  is? 
Could  you  outline  clearly  and  coherently  the  thought  of  the  author  without 
referring  to  the  text?  These  questions,  and  others  similar,  will  test  how 
well  you  comprehend.  You  should  never  fall  below  80  per  cent  on  any 
quiz  you  give  yourself. 

We  also  read  faster  when  we  see  more.  The  eye  picks  up  an  eyeful  of 
print  as  one  might  gather  an  armload  of  wood.  As  a  child  I  was  sent  out 
to  get  wood  for  the  fire.  I  came  in  from  the  woodpile,  one  stick  in  each 
hand.  I  had  all,  I  thought,  that  I  could  carry.  Then  my  father  showed  me 
how  to  carry  an  armload  of  wood.  I  immediately  increased  my  carrying 
efficiency  many  times. 

So  with  the  reader.  The  word-by-word  reader  brings  the  thought  from 
the  printed  page  in  dribs.  Because  of  inefficient  reading  habits  the  eye  of 
the  poor  reader  has  looked  at  a  line  of  print  and  has  seen  only  a  very  small 
fraction  of  it.  When  one  fixes  his  eyes  on  any  particular  spot,  he  is  aware 
that  he  is  able  to  see  on  either  side  of  this  point  with  perfect  clarity  up  to 
a  peripheral  area  where  the  field  of  vision  begins  to  blur.  This  readable 
area,  that  one  sees  with  a  single  glance,  is  the  "eye-span/'  Span  can  be 


Reading  as  Pleasure  and  Work  9 

developed  so  that  with  proper  training  one  can  force  himself  to  see  more 
and  more  at  one  glance.  Increased  eye-span  means  greater  intake;  greater 
intake,  more  efficient  reading. 

A  simple  exercise  with  the  daily  newspaper  will  help  you  develop  in- 
creased eye-span.  Take  any  column  of  newsprint  and  locate  a  three-  or 
four-letter  word  in  the  middle  of  the  line.  Beginning  from  either  side  of 
this  chosen  word,  draw  straight,  diverging  lines  about  four  or  five  inches 
long  with  a  pen  or  soft  pencil,  until  the  lines  widen  to  column  width  and 
touch  the  printed  lines  that  separate  the  columns.  Now  place  a  card  or 
blotter  over  the  marked  area.  Fix  your  eyes  on  a  spot  near  the  top  of  the 
triangle  that  you  have  drawn.  Pull  the  card  down  quickly  and  shove  it 
back  into  position,  allowing  about  half  a  second  of  exposure.  What  words 
did  you  see  between  the  two  lines?  Now  fix  your  eyes  farther  down  the 
column  that  is  covered  by  the  card.  Repeat  the  pull-push  technique.  How 
many  words  did  you  see  this  time?  Repeat  this  again  and  again.  Practice 
every  day.  Soon  you  will  realize  that  you  are  gradually  seeing  more  and 
more  at  a  single  glance.  Your  eye-span  will  be  increasing. 

There  are  many  other  factors  that  may  be  mentioned  in  connection  with 
learning  to  read  faster  and  more  comprehensively.  One  of  these  is  the 
arresting  of  the  impulse  to  glance  back  over  the  line  of  print  one  has  just 
read  in  order  to  pick  up  a  word  or  phrase  that  one  thinks  he  has  missed. 
Such  backward  glances  are  called  "regressions."  Most  of  the  time  they 
indicate  that  the  reader  is  not  mentally  alert,  or  that  he  has  formed  a  poor 
reading  habit.  For  die  sake  of  practice,  when  you  find  yourself  tempted  to 
look  back  to  check  on  something  you  think  you  have  missed  or  not  seen 
correctly,  arrest  your  impulse  and  drive  yourself  on.  Drive  yourself  to 
get  from  the  oncoming  text  its  full  meaning.  Frequently  you  will  find  that 
you  did  see  and  comprehend  quite  adequately  what  you  thought  at  the  in- 
stant of  the  impulse  to  regress  that  you  had  missed.  The  eye  sees  more 
than  we  think  it  sees;  the  mind  often  records  more  word-meanings  than  we 
realize.  Only  when  the  thought  goes  completely  to  pieces  should  you  check 
back  to  locate  the  difficulty. 

Reading  is  an  extremely  complex  visuo-psychological  process.  Marked 
reading  retardation  should  have  the  best  advice  of  a  reading  specialist. 
The  quickest  way  for  anyone  to  improve  his  reading  efficiency  is  to  seek 
the  help  of  a  reading  center,  such  as  are  to  be  found  at  many  of  the  leading 
universities  throughout  the  country.  But  for  much  of  our  population  these 
reading  centers  are  not  available.  Nevertheless,  the  average  adult  can 
improve  his  reading  rate  and  comprehension  and,  through  persistent  effort 
and  intelligent  application  of  the  suggestions  which  have  been  very  briefly 
outlined  in  this  chapter,  he  should  notice  within  a  relatively  short  time  that 
he  is  speeding  over  the  highways  of  print  with  more  efficiency  and  less 
effort. 


How  to  Mark  a  Book 

JWortimer  *].  Adler  -  4902- 


Good  readers,  reading  for  blood,  know  how  much  it  helps  to  read 
armed  with  a  pencil.   Mr.  Adler  tells  how,  when,  and  why  to  use  one. 

You  KNOW  you  have  to  read  "between  the  lines"  to  get  the  most  out  of  any- 
thing. I  want  to  persuade  you  to  do  something  equally  important  in  the 
course  of  your  reading.  I  want  to  persuade  you  to  "write  between  the 
lines."  Unless  you  do,  you  are  not  likely  to  do  the  most  efficient  kind  of 
reading. 

I  contend,  quite  bluntly,  that  marking  up  a  book  is  not  an  act  of  mutila- 
tion but  of  love. 

You  shouldn't  mark  up  a  book  which  isn't  yours.  Librarians  (or  your 
friends)  who  lend  you  books  expect  you  to  keep  them  clean,  and  you 
should.  If  you  decide  that  I  am  right  about  the  usefulness  of  marking 
books,  you  will  have  to  buy  them.  Most  of  the  world's  great  books  are 
available  today,  in  reprint  editions,  at  less  than  a  dollar. 

There  are  two  ways  in  which  one  can  own  a  book.  The  first  is  the 
property  right  you  establish  by  paying  for  it,  just  as  you  pay  for  clothes  and 
furniture.  But  this  act  of  purchase  is  only  the  prelude  to  possession.  Full 
ownership  comes  only  when  you  have  made  it  a  part  of  yourself,  and  the 
best  way  to  make  yourself  a  part  of  it  is  by  writing  in  it.  An  illustration 
may  make  the  point  clear.  You  buy  a  beefsteak  and  transfer  it  from  the 
butcher's  icebox  to  your  own.  But  you  do  not  own  the  beefsteak  in  the 
most  important  sense  until  you  consume  it  and  get  it  into  your  bloodstream. 
I  am  arguing  that  books,  too,  must  be  absorbed  in  your  bloodstream  to  do 
you  any  good. 

Confusion  about  what  it  means  to  own  a  book  leads  people  to  a  false 
reverence  for  paper,  binding,  and  type  —  a  respect  for  the  physical  thing 
— -  the  craft  of  the  printer  rather  than  the  genius  of  the  author.  They  forget 
that  it  is  possible  for  a  man  to  acquire  the  idea,  to  possess  the  beauty, 
which  a  great  book  contains,  without  staking  his  claim  by  pasting  his  book- 
plate inside  the  cover.  Having  a  fine  library  doesn't  prove  that  its  owner 
has  a  mind  enriched  by  books;  it  proves  nothing  more  than  that  he,  his 
father,  or  his  wife,  was  rich  enough  to  buy  them. 

There  are  three  kinds  of  book  owners.  The  first  has  all  the  standard  sets 
and  best-sellers  —  unread,  untouched.  (This  deluded  individual  owns 
woodpulp  and  ink,  not  books. )  The  second  has  a  great  many  books  —  a 

Reprinted  by  permission  from  The  Saturday  Review  of  Literature,  July  6,  1940. 

10 


Reading  as  Pleasure  and  Work  11 

few  of  them  read  through,  most  of  them  dipped  into,  but  all  of  them  as 
clean  and  shiny  as  the  day  they  were  bought.  (This  person  would  probably 
like  to  make  books  his  own,  but  is  restrained  by  a  false  respect  for  their 
physical  appearance.)  The  third  has  a  few  books  or  many  —  every  one 
of  them  dog-eared  and  dilapidated,  shaken  and  loosened  by  continual 
use,  marked  and  scribbled  in  from  front  to  back.  (This  man  owns 
books. ) 

Is  it  false  respect,  you  may  ask,  to  preserve  intact  and  unblemished  a 
beautifully  printed  book,  an  elegantly  bound  edition?  Of  course  not.  I'd 
no  more  scribble  all  over  a  first  edition  of  Paradise  Lost  than  I'd  give  my 
baby  a  set  of  crayons  and  an  original  Rembrandt!  I  wouldn't  mark  up  a 
painting  or  a  statue.  Its  soul,  so  to  speak,  is  inseparable  from  its  body.  And 
the  beauty  of  a  rare  edition  or  of  a  richly  manufactured  volume  is  like  that 
of  a  painting  or  a  statue. 

But  the  soul  of  a  book  can  be  separated  from  its  body.  A  book  is  more 
like  the  score  of  a  piece  of  music  than  it  is  like  a  painting.  No  great 
musician  confuses  a  symphony  with  the  printed  sheets  of  music.  Arturo 
Toscanini  reveres  Brahms,  but  Toscanini's  score  of  the  C-minor  Symphony 
is  so  thoroughly  marked  up  that  no  one  but  the  maestro  himself  can  read  it. 
The  reason  why  a  great  conductor  makes  notations  on  his  musical  scores  — 
marks  them  up  again  and  again  each  time  he  returns  to  study  them  —  is  the 
reason  why  you  should  mark  your  books.  If  your  respect  for  magnificent 
binding  or  typography  gets  in  the  way,  buy  yourself  a  cheap  edition  and 
pay  your  respects  to  the  author. 

Why  is  marking  up  a  book  indispensable  to  reading?  First,  it  keeps  you 
awake.  ( And  I  don't  mean  merely  conscious;  I  mean  wide  awake. )  In  the 
second  place,  reading,  if  it  is  active,  is  thinking,  and  thinking  tends  to  ex- 
press itself  in  words,  spoken  or  written.  The  marked  book  is  usually  the 
thought-through  book.  Finally,  writing  helps  you  remember  the  thoughts 
you  had,  or  the  thoughts  the  author  expressed.  Let  me  develop  these  three 
points. 

If  reading  is  to  accomplish  anything  more  than  passing  time,  it  must  be 
active.  You  can't  let  your  eyes  glide  across  the  lines  of  a  book  and  come  up 
with  an  understanding  of  what  you  have  read.  Now  an  ordinary  piece  of 
light  fiction,  like  say,  Gone  with  the  Wind,  doesn't  require  the  most  active 
kind  of  reading.  The  books  you  read  for  pleasure  can  be  read  in  a  state  of 
relaxation,  and  nothing  is  lost.  But  a  great  book,  rich  in  ideas  and  beauty, 
a  book  that  raises  and  tries  to  answer  great  fundamental  questions,  de- 
mands the  most  active  reading  of  which  you  are  capable.  You  don't 
absorb  the  ideas  of  John  Dewey  the  way  you  absorb  the  crooning  of  Mr. 
Vallee.  You  have  to  reach  for  them.  That  you  cannot  do  while  you're 
asleep. 

If,  when  you've  finished  reading  a  book,  the  pages  are  filled  with  your 
notes,  you  know  that  you  read  actively.  The  most  famous  active  reader  of 


12  Reader 

great  books  I  know  is  President  Hutchins,  of  the  University  of  Chicago. 
He  also  has  the  hardest  schedule  of  business  activities  of  any  man  I  know. 
He  invariably  reads  with  a  pencil,  and  sometimes,  when  he  picks  up  a 
book  and  pencil  in  the  evening,  he  finds  himself,  instead  of  making  in- 
telligent notes,  drawing  what  he  calls  "caviar  factories"  on  the  margins. 
When  that  happens,  he  puts  the  book  down.  He  knows  he's  too  tired  to 
read,  and  he's  just  wasting  time. 

But,  you  may  ask,  why  is  writing  necessary?  Well,  the  physical  act  of 
writing,  with  your  own  hand,  brings  words  and  sentences  more  sharply 
before  your  mind  and  preserves  them  better  in  your  memory.  To  set  down 
your  reaction  to  important  words  and  sentences  you  have  read,  and  the 
questions  they  have  raised  in  your  mind,  is  to  preserve  those  reactions  and 
sharpen  those  questions. 

Even  if  you  wrote  on  a  scratch  pad,  and  threw  the  paper  away  when  you 
had  finished  writing,  your  grasp  of  the  book  would  be  surer.  But  you 
don't  have  to  throw  the  paper  away.  The  margins  (top  and  bottom,  as 
well  as  side),  the  end-papers,  the  very  space  between  the  lines,  are  all 
available.  They  aren't  sacred.  And,  best  of  all,  your  marks  and  notes  be- 
come an  integral  part  of  the  book  and  stay  there  forever.  You  can  pick  up 
the  book  the  following  week  or  year,  and  there  are  all  your  points  of 
agreement,  disagreement,  doubt,  and  inquiry.  It's  like  resuming  an  inter- 
rupted conversation  with  the  advantage  of  being  able  to  pick  up  where 
you  left  off. 

And  that  is  exactly  what  reading  a  book  should  be:  a  conversation  be- 
tween you  and  the  author.  Presumably  he  knows  more  about  the  subject 
than  you  do;  naturally,  you'll  have  the  proper  humility  as  you  approach 
him.  But  don't  let  anybody  tell  you  that  a  reader  is  supposed  to  be  solely 
on  the  receiving  end.  Understanding  is  a  two-way  operation;  learning 
doesn't  consist  in  being  an  empty  receptacle.  The  learner  has  to  question 
himself  and  question  the  teacher.  He  even  has  to  argue  with  the  teacher, 
once  he  understands  what  the  teacher  is  saying.  And  marking  a  book  is 
literally  an  expression  of  your  differences,  or  agreements  of  opinion,  with 
the  author. 

There  are  all  kinds  of  devices  for  marking  a  book  intelligently  and  fruit- 
fully. Here's  the  way  I  do  it: 

1.  Underlining:  of  major  points,  of  important  or  forceful  statements. 

2.  Vertical  lines  at  the  margin:  to  emphasize  a  statement  already  under- 
lined. 

3.  Star,  asterisk,  or  other  doo-dad  at  the  margin:  to  be  used  sparingly, 
to  emphasize  the  ten  or  twenty  most  important  statements  in  the  book. 
( You  may  want  to  fold  the  bottom  corner  of  each  page  on  which  you  use 
such  marks.   It  won't  hurt  the  sturdy  paper  on  which  most  modern  books 
are  printed,  and  you  will  be  able  to  take  the  book  off  the  shelf  at  any  time 
and,  by  opening  it  at  the  folded-corner  page,  refresh  your  recollection  of 
the  book.) 


Reading  as  Pleasure  and  Work  13 

4.  Numbers  in  the  margin:  to  indicate  the  sequence  of  points  the  author 
makes  in  developing  a  single  argument. 

5.  Numbers  of  other  pages  in  the  margin:  to  indicate  where  else  in  the 
book  the  author  made  points  relevant  to  the  point  marked;  to  tie  up  the 
ideas  in  a  book,  which,  though  they  may  be  separated  by  many  pages,  be- 
long together. 

6.  Circling  of  key  words  or  phrases. 

7.  Writing  in  the  margin,  or  at  the  top  or  bottom  of  the  page,  for  the 
sake  of:  recording  questions  ( and  perhaps  answers )  which  a  passage  raised 
in  your  mind;  reducing  a  complicated  discussion  to  a  simple  statement; 
recording  the  sequence  of  major  points  right  through  the  books.  I  use  the 
end-papers  at  the  back  of  the  book  to  make  a  personal  index  of  the  author's 
points  in  the  order  of  their  appearance. 

The  front  end-papers  are,  to  me,  the  most  important.  Some  people  re- 
serve them  for  a  fancy  bookplate.  I  reserve  them  for  fancy  thinking.  After 
I  have  finished  reading  the  book  and  making  my  personal  index  on  the 
back  end-papers,  I  turn  to  the  front  and  try  to  outline  the  book,  not  page  by 
page,  or  point  by  point  (I've  already  done  that  at  the  back),  but  as  an 
integrated  structure,  with  a  basic  unity  and  an  order  of  parts.  This  outline 
is,  to  me,  the  measure  of  my  understanding  of  the  work. 

If  you're  a  die-hard  anti-book-marker,  you  may  object  that  the  margins, 
the  space  between  the  lines,  and  the  end-papers  don't  give  you  room 
enough.  All  right.  How  about  using  a  scratch  pad  slightly  smaller  than  the 
page-size  of  the  book  —  so  that  the  edges  of  the  sheets  won't  protrude? 
Make  your  index,  outlines,  and  even  your  notes  on  the  pad,  and  then  insert 
these  sheets  permanently  inside  the  front  and  back  covers  of  the  book. 

Or,  you  may  say  that  this  business  of  marking  books  is  going  to  slow  up 
your  reading.  It  probably  will.  That's  one  of  the  reasons  for  doing  it. 
Most  of  us  have  been  taken  in  by  the  notion  that  speed  of  reading  is  a 
measure  of  our  intelligence.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  the  right  speed  for 
intelligent  reading.  Some  things  should  be  read  quickly  and  effortlessly, 
and  some  should  be  read  slowly  and  even  laboriously.  -The  sign  of  intelli- 
gence in  reading  is  the  ability  to  read  different  things  differently  accord- 
ing to  their  worth.  In  the  case  of  good  books,  the  point  is  not  to  see  how 
many  of  them  you  can  get  through,  but  rather  how  many  can  get  through 
you  —  how  many  you  can  make  your  own.  A  few  friends  are  better  than 
a  thousand  acquaintances.  If  this  be  your  aim,  as  it  should  be,  you  will 
not  be  impatient  if  it  takes  more  time  and  effort  to  read  a  great  book  than 
it  does  a  newspaper. 

You  may  have  one  final  objection  to  marking  books.  You  can't  lend  them 
to  your  friends  because  nobody  else  can  read  them  without  being  distracted 
by  your  notes.  Furthermore,  you  won't  want  to  lend  them  because  a 
marked  copy  is  a  kind  of  intellectual  diary,  and  lending  it  is  almost  like 
giving  your  mind  away. 

If  your  friend  wishes  to  read  your  Plutarch's  Lives,  Shakespeare,  or  The 


14  Reader 

Federalist  Papers,  tell  him  gently  but  firmly  to  buy  a  copy.  You  will  lend 
him  your  car  or  your  coat  —  but  your  books  are  as  much  a  part  of  you  as 
your  head  or  your  heart. 


Of  Studies    ^  Francis  'Bacon  •  i56i-i626 


Shakespeare's  wise  and  learned  contemporary,  Francis  Bacon,  wrote 
many  important  works,  but  his  Essays  (1597,  1625),  as  he  declared,  "of 
all  my  works  have  been  most  current,  for  that,  as  it  seems,  they  come 
home  to  men's  business  and  bosoms/'  In  them  he  distilled  the  practical 
wisdom  of  books  and  experience.  Most  of  what  can  be  or  has  been  said 
about  "studies"  is  implicit  in  this  brief  essay,  ft  well  repays  the  labor 
of  interpreting  its  sometimes  archaic  English  and  pondering  its  com- 
pressed expression. 

STUDIES  SERVE  FOR  DELIGHT,  for  ornament,  and  for  ability.  Their  chief  use 
for  delight  is  in  privateness  and  retiring;  for  ornament,  is  in  discourse;  and 
for  ability,  is  in  the  judgment  and  disposition  of  business.  For  expert  men 
can  execute,  and  perhaps  judge  of  particulars,  one  by  one;  but  the  general 
counsels,  and  the  plots  and  marshalling  of  affairs,  come  best  from  those 
that  are  learned.  To  spend  too  much  time  in  studies  is  sloth;  to  use  them 
too  much  for  ornament,  is  affectation;  to  make  judgment  wholly  by  their 
rules,  is  the  humor  of  a  scholar.  They  perfect  nature,  and  are  perfected  by 
experience:  for  natural  abilities  are  like  natural  plants,  that  need  proyning,1 
by  study;  and  studies  themselves  do  give  forth  directions  too  much  at  large, 
except  they  be  bounded  in  by  experience.  Crafty  men  contemn  studies, 
simple  men  admire  them,  and  wise  men  use  them;  for  they  teach  not  their 
own  use;  but  that  is  a  wisdom  without  them,  and  above  them,  won  by 
observation.  Read  not  to  contradict  and  confute;  nor  to  believe  and  take 
for  granted;  nor  to  find  talk  and  discourse;  but  to  weigh  and  consider. 
Some  books  are  to  be  tasted,  others  to  be  swallowed,  and  some  few  to  be 
chewed  and  digested;  that  is,  some  books  are  to  be  read  only  in  parts; 
others  to  be  read,  but  not  curiously;  2  and  some  few  to  be  read  wholly,  and 
with  diligence  and  attention.  Some  books  also  may  be  read  by  deputy,  and 
extracts  made  of  them  by  others;  but  that  would  be  only  in  the  less  im- 
portant arguments,  and  the  meaner  sort  of  books;  else  distilled  books  are 
like  common  distilled  waters,  flashy 8  things.  Reading  maketh  a  full  man; 
conference  a  ready  man;  and  writing  an  exact  man.  And  therefore,  if  a 
man  write  little,  he  had  need  have  a  great  memory;  if  he  confer  little,  he 
had  need  have  a  present  wit:  and  if  he  read  little,  he  had  need  have  much 
1  pruning,  cultivating.  2  carefully.  8  tasteless. 


Reading  as  Pleasure  and  Work  15 

cunning,  to  seem  to  know  that4  he  doth  not.  Histories  make  men  wise; 
poets  witty; 5  the  mathematics  subtile;  natural  philosophy  deep;  moral 
grave;  logic  and  rhetoric  able  to  contend.  Abeunt  studia  in  mores.9  Nay, 
there  is  no  stond  7  or  impediment  in  the  wit  but  may  be  wrought  out  by 
fit  studies;  like  as  diseases  of  the  body  may  have  appropriate  exercises. 
Bowling  is  good  for  the  stone  and  reins;  8  shooting  for  the  lungs  and  breast; 
gentle  walking  for  the  stomach;  riding  for  the  head;  and  the  like.  So  if  a 
man's  wit  be  wandering,  let  him  study  the  mathematics;  for  in  demonstra- 
tions, if  his  wit  be  called  away  never  so  little,  he  must  begin  again.  If  his 
wit  be  not  apt  to  distinguish  or  find  differences,  let  him  study  the  School- 
men; for  they  are  cymini  sect  ores.9  If  he  be  not  apt  to  beat  over  matters, 
and  to  call  up  one  thing  to  prove  and  illustrate  another,  let  him  study  the 
lawyers'  cases.  So  every  defect  of  the  mind  may  have  a  special  receipt 

4  what.  R  Poets  make  men  witty,  i.e.,  full  of  fancy,  imaginative. 

6  Studies  develop  into  manners   (Ovid). 

7  obstruction.  8  kidneys.  9  hair-splitters. 


The  Art  of 

Reading  *P*  Lin  Jutang  •  4895- 


To  "study  bitterly"  —  as  Lin  Yutang  calls  the  kind  of  reading 
Leedy  and  Adler  have  in  mind  —  is  necessary  for  college  students  at 
work  on  their  textbooks.  But  too  often  the  hard  work  of  college  reading 
makes  both  student  and  teacher  forget  what  ought  to  be  a  major  pur- 
pose of  any  course  in  reading,  to  get  a  taste  for  reading  and  make  a  de- 
lightful habit  of  it. 

READING  or  the  enjoyment  of  books  has  always  been  regarded  among  the 
charms  of  a  cultured  life  and  is  respected  and  envied  by  those  who  rarely 
give  themselves  that  privilege.  This  is  easy  to  understand  when  we  com- 
pare the  difference  between  the  life  of  a  man  who  does  no  reading  and 
that  of  a  man  who  does.  The  man  who  has  not  the  habit  of  reading  is  im- 
prisoned in  his  immediate  world,  in  respect  to  time  and  space.  His  life 
falls  into  a  set  routine;  he  is  limited  to  contact  and  conversation  with  a  few 
friends  and  acquaintances,  and  he  sees  only  what  happens  in  his  immediate 
neighborhood.  From  this  prison  there  is  no  escape.  But  the  moment  he 
takes  up  a  book,  he  immediately  enters  a  different  world,  and  if  it  is  a  good 

Lin  Yutang,  The  Importance  of  Living  (New  York:  The  John  Day  Company,  Inc.). 
Copyright,  1937,  by  the  John  Day  Company.    Pp.  376-383. 


16  Reader 

book,  he  is  immediately  put  in  touch  with  one  of  the  best  talkers  of  the 
world.  This  talker  leads  him  on  and  carries  him  into  a  different  country  or 
a  different  age,  or  unburdens  to  him  some  of  his  personal  regrets,  or  dis- 
cusses with  him  some  special  line  or  aspect  of  life  that  the  reader  knows 
nothing  about.  An  ancient  author  puts  him  in  communion  with  a  dead 
spirit  of  long  ago,  and  as  he  reads  along,  he  begins  to  imagine  what  that 
ancient  author  looked  like  and  what  type  of  person  he  was.  Both  Mencius 
and  Ssema  Ch'ien,  China's  greatest  historian,  have  expressed  the  same  idea. 
Now  to  be  able  to  live  two  hours  out  of  twelve  in  a  different  world  and  take 
one's  thoughts  off  the  claims  of  the  immediate  present  is,  of  course,  a  privi- 
lege to  be  envied  by  people  shut  up  in  their  bodily  prison.  Such  a  change 
of  environment  is  really  similar  to  travel  in  its  psychological  effect. 

But  there  is  more  to  it  than  this.  The  reader  is  always  carried  away  into 
a  world  of  thought  and  reflection.  Even  if  it  is  a  book  about  physical 
events,  there  is  a  difference  between  seeing  such  events  in  person  or  living 
through  them,  and  reading  about  them  in  books,  for  then  the  events  always 
assume  the  quality  of  a  spectacle  and  the  reader  becomes  a  detached  spec- 
tator. The  best  reading  is  therefore  that  which  leads  us  into  this  con- 
templative mood,  and  not  that  which  is  merely  occupied  with  the  report  of 
events.  The  tremendous  amount  of  time  spent  on  newspapers  I  regard  as 
not  reading  at  all,  for  the  average  readers  of  papers  are  mainly  concerned 
with  getting  reports  about  events  and  happenings  without  contemplative 
value. 

The  best  formula  for  the  object  of  reading,  in  my  opinion,  was  stated  by 
Huang  Shanku,  a  Sung  poet  and  friend  of  Su  Tungp'o.  He  said,  "A 
scholar  who  hasn't  read  anything  for  three  days  feels  that  his  talk  has  no 
flavor  (becomes  insipid),  and  his  own  face  becomes  hateful  to  look  at  (in 
the  mirror)."  What  he  means,  of  course,  is  that  reading  gives  a  man  a  cer- 
tain charm  and  flavor,  which  is  the  entire  object  of  reading,  and  only  read- 
ing with  this  object  can  be  called  an  art.  One  doesn't  read  to  "improve 
one's  mind,"  because  when  one  begins  to  think  of  improving  his  mind,  all 
the  pleasure  of  reading  is  gone.  He  is  the  type  of  person  who  says  to  him- 
self: "I  must  read  Shakespeare,  and  I  must  read  Sophocles,  and  I  must  read 
the  entire  Five  Foot  Shelf  of  Dr.  Eliot,  so  I  can  become  an  educated  man." 
I'm  sure  that  man  will  never  become  educated.  He  will  force  himself  one 
evening  to  read  Shakespeare's  Hamlet  and  come  away,  as  if  from  a  bad 
dream,  with  no  greater  benefit  than  that  he  is  able  to  say  that  he  has  "read" 
Hamlet.  Anyone  who  reads  a  book  with  a  sense  of  obligation  does  not 
understand  the  art  of  reading.  This  type  of  reading  with  a  business  pur- 
pose is  in  no  way  different  from  a  senator's  reading  up  of  files  and  reports 
before  he  makes  a  speech.  It  is  asking  for  business  advice  and  information, 
and  not  reading  at  all. 

Reading  for  the  cultivation  of  personal  charm  of  appearance  and  flavor 
in  speech  is  then,  according  to  Huang,  the  only  admissible  kind  of  reading. 
This  charm  of  appearance  must  evidently  be  interpreted  as  something  other 


Reading  as  Pleasure  and  Work  17 

than  physical  beauty.  What  Huang  means  by  "hateful  to  look  at"  is  not 
physical  ugliness.  There  are  ugly  faces  that  have  a  fascinating  charm  and 
beautiful  faces  that  are  insipid  to  look  at.  I  have  among  my  Chinese  friends 
one  whose  head  is  shaped  like  a  bomb  and  yet  who  is  nevertheless  always 
a  pleasure  to  see.  The  most  beautiful  face  among  Western  authors,  so  far 
as  I  have  seen  them  in  pictures,  was  that  of  G.  K.  Chesterton.  There  was 
such  a  diabolical  conglomeration  of  mustache,  glasses,  fairly  bushy  eye- 
brows and  knitted  lines  where  the  eyebrows  met!  One  felt  there  were  a 
vast  number  of  ideas  playing  about  inside  that  forehead,  ready  at  any  time 
to  burst  out  from  those  quizzically  penetrating  eyes.  That  is  what  Huang 
would  call  a  beautiful  face,  a  face  not  made  up  by  powder  and  rouge,  but 
by  the  sheer  force  of  thinking.  As  for  flavor  of  speech,  it  all  depends  on 
one's  way  of  reading.  Whether  one  has  "flavor"  or  not  in  his  talk,  depends 
on  his  method  of  reading.  If  a  reader  gets  the  flavor  of  books,  he  will  show 
that  flavor  in  his  conversations,  and  if  he  has  flavor  in  his  conversations,  he 
cannot  help  also  having  a  flavor  in  his  writing. 

Hence  I  consider  flavor  or  taste  as  the  key  to  all  reading.  It  necessarily 
follows  that  taste  is  selective  and  individual,  like  the  taste  for  food.  The 
most  hygienic  way  of  eating  is,  after  all,  eating  what  one  likes,  for  then  one 
is  sure  of  his  digestion.  In  reading  as  in  eating,  what  is  one  man's  meat  may 
be  another's  poison.  A  teacher  cannot  force  his  pupils  to  like  what  he  likes 
in  reading,  and  a  parent  cannot  expect  his  children  to  have  the  same  tastes 
as  himself.  And  if  the  reader  has  no  taste  for  what  he  reads,  all  the  time 
is  wasted.  As  Yuan  Chunglang  says,  "You  can  leave  the  books  that  you 
don't  like  alone,  and  let  other  people  read  them" 

There  can  be,  therefore,  no  books  that  one  absolutely  must  read.  For 
our  intellectual  interests  grow  like  a  tree  or  flow  like  a  river.  So  long  as 
there  is  proper  sap,  the  tree  will  grow  anyhow,  and  so  long  as  there  is  fresh 
current  from  the  spring,  the  water  will  flow.  When  water  strikes  a  granite 
cliff,  it  just  goes  around  it;  when  it  finds  itself  in  a  pleasant  low  valley,  it 
stops  and  meanders  there  a  while;  when  it  finds  itself  in  a  deep  mountain 
pond,  it  is  content  to  stay  there;  when  it  finds  itself  traveling  over  rapids, 
it  hurries  forward.  Thus,  without  any  effort  or  determined  aim,  it  is  sure 
of  reaching  the  sea  some  day.  There  are  no  books  in  this  world  that 
everybody  must  read,  but  only  books  that  a  person  must  read  at  a  certain 
time  in  a  given  place  under  given  circumstances  and  at  a  given  period  of 
his  life.  I  rather  think  that  reading,  like  matrimony,  is  determined  by  fate 
or  yinyuan.  Even  if  there  is  a  certain  book  that  every  one  must  read,  like 
the  Bible,  there  is  a  time  for  it.  When  one's  thoughts  and  experience  have 
not  reached  a  certain  point  for  reading  a  masterpiece,  the  masterpiece  will 
leave  only  a  bad  flavor  on  his  palate.  Confucius  said,  "When  one  is  fifty, 
one  may  read  the  Book  of  Changes"  which  means  that  one  should  not  read 
it  at  forty-five.  The  extremely  mild  flavor  of  Confucius'  own  sayings  in  the 
Analects  and  his  mature  wisdom  cannot  be  appreciated  until  one  becomes 
mature  himself. 


18  Reader 

Furthermore,  the  same  reader  reading  the  same  book  at  different  periods, 
gets  a  different  flavor  out  of  it.  For  instance,  we  enjoy  a  book  more  after 
we  have  had  a  personal  talk  with  the  author  himself,  or  even  after  having 
seen  a  picture  of  his  face,  and  one  gets  again  a  different  flavor  sometimes 
after  one  has  broken  off  friendship  with  the  author.  A  person  gets  a  kind 
of  flavor  from  reading  the  Book  of  Changes  at  forty,  and  gets  another  kind 
of  flavor  reading  it  at  fifty,  after  he  has  seen  more  changes  in  life.  There- 
fore, all  good  books  can  be  read  with  profit  and  renewed  pleasure  a  second 
time.  I  was  made  to  read  Westward  Hot  and  Henry  Esmond  in  my  col- 
lege days,  but  while  I  was  capable  of  appreciating  Westward  Ho!  in  my 
'teens,  the  real  flavor  of  Henry  Esmond  escaped  me  entirely  until  I  re- 
flected about  it  later  on,  and  suspected  there  was  vastly  more  charm  in  that 
book  than  I  had  then  been  capable  of  appreciating. 

Reading,  therefore,  is  an  act  consisting  of  two  sides,  the  author  and  the 
reader.  The  net  gain  comes  as  much  from  the  reader's  contribution 
through  his  own  insight  and  experience  as  from  the  author's  own.  In 
speaking  about  the  Confucian  Analects,  the  Sung  Confucianist  Ch'eng 
Yich'uan  said,  "There  are  readers  and  readers.  Some  read  the  Analects 
and  feel  that  nothing  has  happened,  some  are  pleased  with  one  or  two 
lines  in  it,  and  some  begin  to  wave  their  hands  and  dance  on  their  legs 
unconsciously." 

I  regard  the  discovery  of  one's  favorite  author  as  the  most  critical  event 
in  one's  intellectual  development.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  the  affinity  of 
spirits,  and  among  the  authors  of  ancient  and  modern  times,  one  must  try 
to  find  an  author  whose  spirit  is  akin  with  his  own.  Only  in  this  way  can 
one  get  any  real  good  out  of  reading.  One  has  to  be  independent  and 
search  out  his  masters.  Who  is  one's  favorite  author,  no  one  can  tell, 
probably  not  even  the  man  himself.  It  is  like  love  at  first  sight.  The  reader 
cannot  be  told  to  love  this  one  or  that  one,  but  when  he  has  found  the 
author  he  loves,  he  knows  it  himself  by  a  kind  of  instinct.  We  have  such 
famous  cases  of  discoveries  of  authors.  Scholars  seem  to  have  lived  in 
different  ages,  separated  by  centuries,  and  yet  their  modes  of  thinking  and 
feeling  were  so  akin  that  their  coming  together  across  the  pages  of  a  book 
was  like  a  person  finding  his  own  image.  In  Chinese  phraseology,  we  speak 
of  these  kindred  spirits  as  re-incarnations  of  the  same  soul,  as  Su  Tungp'o 
was  said  to  be  a  re-incarnation  of  Chuangtse  or  T'ao  Yiianming,1  and 
Yuan  Chunglang  was  said  to  be  the  re-incarnation  of  Su  Tungp'o.  Su 
Tungp'o  said  that  when  he  first  read  Chuangtse,  he  felt  as  if  all  the  time 
since  his  childhood  he  had  been  thinking  the  same  things  and  taking  the 
same  views  himself.  When  Yuan  Chunglang  discovered  one  night  Hsu 
Wench'ang,  a  contemporary  unknown  to  him,  in  a  small  book  of  poems, 

1  Su  Tungp'o  performed  the  unique  feat  of  writing  a  complete  set  of  poems  on  the 
rhymes  used  by  the  complete  poems  of  T'ao,  and  at  the  end  of  the  collection  of  Sus 
Poems  on  Tao's  Rhymes,  he  said  of  himself  that  he  was  the  re-incarnation  of  T'ao, 
whom  he  admired  desperately  above  all  other  predecessors*  [Author.] 


Reading  as  Pleasure  and  Work  19 

he  jumped  out  of  bed  and  shouted  to  his  friend,  and  his  friend  began  to 
read  it  and  shout  in  turn,  and  then  they  both  read  and  shouted  again  until 
their  servant  was  completely  puzzled.  George  Eliot  described  her  first 
reading  of  Rousseau  as  an  electric  shock.  Nietzsche  felt  the  same  thing 
about  Schopenhauer,  but  Schopenhauer  was  a  peevish  master  and  Nietz- 
sche was  a  violent-tempered  pupil,  and  it  was  natural  that  the  pupil  later 
rebelled  against  the  teacher. 

It  is  only  this  kind  of  reading,  this  discovery  of  one's  favorite  author, 
that  will  do  one  any  good  at  all.  Like  a  man  falling  in  love  with  his  sweet- 
heart at  first  sight,  everything  is  right.  She  is  of  the  right  height,  has  the 
right  face,  the  right  color  of  hair,  the  right  quality  of  voice  and  the  right 
way  of  speaking  and  smiling.  This  author  is  not  something  that  a  young 
man  need  be  told  about  by  his  teacher.  The  author  is  just  right  for  him; 
his  style,  his  taste,  his  point  of  view,  his  mode  of  thinking,  are  all  right. 
And  then  the  reader  proceeds  to  devour  every  word  and  every  line  that 
the  author  writes,  and  because  there  is  a  spiritual  affinity,  he  absorbs  and 
readily  digests  everything.  The  author  has  cast  a  spell  over  him,  and  he  is 
glad  to  be  under  the  spell,  and  in  time  his  own  voice  and  manner  and  way 
of  smiling  and  way  of  talking  become  like  the  authors  own.  Thus  he  truly 
steeps  himself  in  his  literary  lover  and  derives  from  these  books  sustenance 
for  his  soul.  After  a  few  years,  the  spell  is  over  and  he  grows  a  little  tired 
of  this  lover  and  seeks  for  new  literary  lovers,  and  after  he  has  had  three 
or  four  lovers  and  completely  eaten  them  up,  he  emerges  as  an  author  him- 
self. There  are  many  readers  who  never  fall  in  love,  like  many  young  men 
and  women  who  flirt  around  and  are  incapable  of  forming  a  deep  at- 
tachment to  a  particular  person.  They  can  read  any  and  all  authors,  and 
they  never  amount  to  anything. 

Such  a  conception  of  the  art  of  reading  completely  precludes  the  idea 
of  reading  as  a  duty  or  as  an  obligation.  In  China,  one  often  encourages 
students  to  "study  bitterly."  There  was  a  famous  scholar  who  studied 
bitterly  and  who  stuck  an  awl  in  his  calf  when  he  fell  asleep  while  studying 
at  night.  There  was  another  scholar  who  had  a  maid  stand  by  his  side  as 
he  was  studying  at  night,  to  wake  him  up  every  time  he  fell  asleep.  This 
was  nonsensical.  If  one  has  a  book  lying  before  him  and  falls  asleep  while 
some  wise  ancient  author  is  talking  to  him,  he  should  just  go  to  bed.  No 
amount  of  sticking  an  awl  in  his  calf  or  of  shaking  him  up  by  a  maid  will 
do  him  any  good.  Such  a  man  has  lost  all  sense  of  the  pleasure  of  reading. 
Scholars  who  are  worth  anything  at  all  never  know  what  is  called  "a  hard 
grind"  or  what  "bitter  study"  means.  They  merely  love  books  and  read  on 
because  they  cannot  help  themselves. 

With  this  question  solved,  the  question  of  time  and  place  for  reading 
is  also  provided  with  an  answer.  There  is  no  proper  time  and  place  for 
reading.  When  the  mood  for  reading  comes,  one  can  read  anywhere.  If 
one  knows  the  enjoyment  of  reading,  he  will  read  in  school  or  out  of  school, 
and  in  spite  of  all  schools.  He  can  study  even  in  the  best  schools.  Tseng 


20  Reader 

Kuofan,  in  one  of  his  family  letters  concerning  the  expressed  desire  of  one 
of  his  younger  brothers  to  come  to  the  capital  and  study  at  a  better  school, 
replied  that:  "If  one  has  the  desire  to  study,  he  can  study  at  a  country 
school,  or  even  on  a  desert  or  in  busy  streets,  and  even  as  a  woodcutter  or 
a  swineherd.  But  if  one  has  no  desire  to  study,  then  not  only  is  the  country 
school  not  proper  for  study,  but  even  a  quiet  country  home  or  a  fairy  island 
is  not  a  proper  place  for  study."  There  are  people  who  adopt  a  self-im- 
portant posture  at  the  desk  when  they  are  about  to  do  some  reading,  and 
then  complain  they  are  unable  to  read  because  the  room  is  too  cold,  or  the 
chair  is  too  hard,  or  the  light  is  too  strong.  And  there  are  writers  who 
complain  that  they  cannot  write  because  there  are  too  many  mosquitos,  or 
the  writing  paper  is  too  shiny,  or  the  noise  from  the  street  is  too  great. 
The  great  Sung  scholar,  Ouyang  Hsiu,  confessed  to  "three  on's"  for  doing 
his  best  writing:  on  the  pillow,  on  horseback  and  on  the  toilet.  Another 
famous  Ch'ing  scholar,  Ku  Ch'ienli,  was  known  for  his  habit  of  "reading 
Confucian  classics  naked"  in  summer.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  good 
reason  for  not  doing  any  reading  in  any  of  the  seasons  of  the  year,  if  one 
does  not  like  reading: 

To  study  in  spring  is  treason; 
And  summer  is  sleep's  best  reason; 
If  winter  hurries  the  fall, 
Then  stop  till  next  spring  season. 

What,  then,  is  the  true  art  of  reading?  The  simple  answer  is  to  just  take 
up  a  book  and  read  when  the  mood  comes.  To  be  thoroughly  enjoyed, 
reading  must  be  entirely  spontaneous. 


What  Does  It  Take  to 

Enjoy  a  Poem?  «*         3°^  dardi  •  m6- 


Many  people,  college  students  included,  have  the  idea  that  poetry 
is  not  for  them.  Young  children  always  like  poems,  but  somewhere  be- 
tween early  schooldays  and  the  end  of  high  school  the  taste  is  lost  — 
or,  we  may  fear,  is  destroyed  by  teachers  like  Thurber's  Miss  Groby  in 
the  essay  following  this  one.  "I  too  dislike  it,"  declares  Marianne 
Moore,  one  of  the  finest  of  contemporary  poets,  in  her  poem  titled 
"Poetry":  and  then  she  goes  on  to  what  is  probably  the  best  explanation 
of  the  common  dislike:  ".  .  .  we  do  not  admire  what  we  cannot  under- 
stand." (See  the  whole  poem,  page  28.)  Not  only  are  poems  too  often 
taught  by  a  Miss  Groby,  but  poems  beyond  the  interest  and  under- 


Reading  as  Pleasure  and  Work  21 

standing  of  young  people  are  selected  and  enforced  upon  student 
readers.  John  Cfardi,  himself  a  poet  represented  in  this  book,  clears 
away  some  of  the  underbrush  of  misunderstandings  and  seeks  to  put 
us  back  on  the  road  to  appreciation. 

WHAT  DOES  IT  TAKE  to  enjoy  a  poem? 
Let  us  begin  with  a  really  difficult  piece  of  symbolism: 

Hickory,  dickory,  dock, 
The  mouse  ran  up  the  clock, 
The  clock  struck  one, 
The  mouse  ran  down, 
Hickory,  dickory,  dock. 

Not  really  complicated  you  say?  Consider  these  questions:  What  does  it 
mean?  Why  a  clock?  Why  a  mouse?  Isn't  it  fairly  unusual  for  mice  to  run 
up  clocks?  What  is  the  point  of  inventing  this  esoteric  incident?  And  since 
the  mouse  ran  up  it  and  down  again,  the  chances  are  it's  a  grandfather 
clock.  What  does  that  signify?  And  isn't  it  a  fairly  obsolete  notion?  Why 
did  the  clock  strike  one?  (To  rhyme  with  "down"?  But  is  "down"  a  rhyme 
for  "one,"  or  is  this  another  slovenly  piece  of  modernism?  Why  didn't  the 
poem  make  the  clock  strike  three  and  the  mouse  turn  to  flee?  It  didn't,  of 
course,  but  why?)  What  is  the  origin  and  significance  of  all  these  un- 
explained symbols?  ( A  symbol  is  something  that  stands  for  something  else. 
What  is  the  something  else?)  Or  is  this  simply  nonsense  verse?  (I  find  that 
hard  to  believe.)  And  even  as  nonsense,  what  is  there  in  this  particular 
combination  of  sounds  and  actions  (symbolic  actions?)  that  makes  this 
jingle  survive  a  long  word-of -mouth  transmission  in  the  English  voice-box? 
Why  mightn't  the  poem  as  easily  have  read: 

Thickery,  thackery,  tea, 
An  owl  flew  into  the  tree. 
The  tree's  down, 
The  owl's  flown, 
Thickery,  thackery,  tea. 

I  submit:  (a)  that  my  parody  is  a  bad  poem,  that  the  original  is  a  good 
one,  and  that  a  serious  and  learned  series  of  lectures  might  be  devoted  to 
the  reasons  why  each  is  so;  (b)  that  none  of  the  questions  I  have  raised 
are  meaningless  and  that  in  fact  many  critics  have  made  a  career  of  asking 
this  sort  of  question  of  less  perfect  poems,  and  (c)  that  neither  you  nor  I 
know  what  the  poem  "means."  I  further  submit  that  such  considerations 
have  frightened  many  readers  away  from  good  poems. 

Originally  printed  in  The  Saturday  Review  of  Literature.  Reprinted  by  permission  of 
the  author. 


22  Reader 

But —  and  this  is  the  point  —  the  child  in  whose  babble  the  poem  is 
immediate  and  alive  has  no  critical  theories  and  no  troubles.  He  is  too 
busy  enjoying  the  pleasures  of  poetry.  The  moral  is  obvious:  do  not  ask 
the  poem  to  be  more  rational  than  you  are.  The  way  to  read  a  poem  is  with 
pleasure:  with  the  child's  pleasure  in  tasting  the  syllables  on  his  tongue,  with 
the  marvel  of  the  child's  eye  that  can  really  see  the  mouse  run  up  the  clock, 
be  panic-stricken,  and  run  down  again,  with  the  child's  hand-clapping, 
rhythmic  joy.  In  short,  to  read  a  poem,  come  prepared  for  delight. 

But  if  a  child  can  do  it  why  can't  you? 

That  question  deserves  attention,  but  before  considering  it,  I  should 
like  to  say  one  thing  of  which  I  am  fairly  certain:  everyone  writes  poetry 
sometime  in  his  life.  Bad  poetry  is  what  we  all  have  in  common.  Such 
poetry  generally  occurs  in  three  categories:  as  invective,  as  obscenity,  and 
as  love-yelps. 

The  obscenity  I  assume  everyone  to  be  capable  of  documenting.  Here 
is  an  example  of  invective: 

Billy  Billy,  dirty  coat 
Stinks  like  a  nanny  goat. 

And  here  is  a  fair  example  of  the  love-yelp: 

Have  you  ever  been  in  love? 

I  ask  you:  have  you  ever  been  in  love? 

Have  you? 

I  have I  know! 

"Billy  Billy,"  you  will  recognize  as  a  kind  of  "Georgie-Porgie  puddin'  and 
pie,"  but  if  you  think  it  peculiar  to  your  childhood  or  to  grandfather's  I 
urge  you  to  look  in  the  encyclopedia  under  Fescennine  for  an  inkling  of  the 
antiquity  of  man's  pleasure  in  jingling  taunts  at  other  men.  "Billy  Billy," 
as  nearly  as  I  know,  was  composed  in  our  fourth-grade  schoolyard  by  a 
former  young  poet  now  in  the  coal  business  and  was  used  to  taunt  our 
local  sloven,  who  has  since  washed-up,  cleaned-up,  grown-up,  and  joined 
the  police  force.  Almost  inevitably  it  earned  its  young  author  a  punch  in 
the  nose:  a  fair  example  of  the  way  criticism  operates  in  our  society  to  kill 
the  poetic  impulse.  The  love-yelp,  a  reasonably  deplorable  specimen  of  its 
class,  was  submitted  for  the  Tufts  College  literary  magazine  when  I  was 
an  undergraduate  assistant  editor.  Anyone  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  be 
reasonably  honest  can  almost  certainly  summon  from  himself  examples  of 
at  least  one  of  these  forms  he  has  attempted  at  one  time  or  another,  and 
enjoyed  attempting. 

If,  then,  the  impulse  to  bad  poetry  is  so  widespread  (though  I  insist  that 
"Billy  Billy"  is  not  at  all  bad),  why  is  it  so  few  people  enjoy  reading  what 
passes  as  good  poetry?  Why  is  it,  for  example,  that  in  a  nation  of  146  mil- 
lion presumably  literate  people,  the  average  sale  for  a  book  of  poems  is 


Reading  as  Pleasure  and  Work  23 

about  500  copies?  Is  it  that  the  pleasures  and  outlets  one  finds  in  compos- 
ing are  purely  private  —  that  only  one's  creation,  good  or  bad,  is  interest- 
ing? Considering  the  variety  of  egos  which  has  banded  together  to  pass  as 
the  human  race,  that  seems  one  reasonably  good  guess,  but  there  is  ob- 
viously more  to  it  that  is  worth  some  speculation: 

First,  it  seems  fairly  obvious  that  the  process  of  growing  up  in  a  nuts- 
and-bolts  world  inhibits  the  poetry  impulse  in  most  people.  Somewhere 
along  the  line,  they  learn  to  say,  "Let's  face  it;  we  must  be  practical." 
Dickens's  School  of  Hard  Facts  is  with  us  all,  and  poetry,  like  poor  Sissy 
Jupe,  is  still  required  to  blush  because  it  cannot  define  a  horse  as  "Quad- 
ruped. Graminivorous.  Forty  teeth,  namely  twenty-four  grinders,  four 
eye-teeth,  and  twelve  incisive."  So  the  literalist  on  his  rostrum  demands  the 
rational:  "What  does  hickory-dickory-dock  mean?  It  has  to  mean  some- 
thing." It  does  indeed,  but  not  anything  you  can  paraphrase,  not  anything 
you  can  prove.  It  means  only  what  every  child  knows  —  delight.  And  de- 
light is  not  a  function  of  the  rational  mind.  As  Archibald  MacLeish  has 
written,  "A  poem  must  not  mean,  but  be."  Whereby,  of  course,  it  does 
mean,  but  not  nuts  and  bolts.  To  see  what  it  does  mean,  you  need  only 
go  read  Mother  Goose  to  a  child:  you  will  then  be  observing  a  natural 
audience  busy  with  the  process  of  receiving  poetry  as  it  was  intended  to  be 
received. 

Point  one,  then,  is  delight:  if  you  mean  to  enjoy  the  poem  as  a  poem, 
stop  cross-examining  it,  stop  trying  to  force  it  to  "make  sense."  The  poem 
is  sense.  Or  if  you  must  cross-examine  remember  at  least  that  the  third 
degree  is  not  the  poem.  Most  poems  do  reveal  themselves  most  richly  after 
close  examination,  but  the  examination  is,  at  best,  only  a  preparation  for 
reading  the  poem.  It  is  never  the  reading  itself. 

More  precisely  put,  an  understanding  of  the  rational  surfaces  of  the 
poem  (the  prose  part  of  the  poem)  may,  in  some  cases,  point  a  direction 
toward  the  poem.  The  poem  is  never  experienced,  however,  until  it  is  felt 
in  the  same  complex  of  mind  and  nerve  from  which  it  arose  —  the  sub- 
conscious. That  experience  sometimes  happens  immediately,  and  is  some- 
times helped  along  by  our  conscious  (rational)  perceptions.  But  to  sub- 
stitute rational  analysis  for  the  larger  contact  of  the  subconscious  is  to  reject 
the  poem.  The  kind  of  communication  that  happens  in  a  poem  is  infinitely 
closer  to  that  of  music  than  to  that  of  prose. 

Second,  poetry,  must  never  be  read  as  an  exercise  in  "reading-speed," 
that  deplorable  mental-mangle  for  increasing  the  rate  of  destruction  of 
text-book  English.  The  fastest  reader  is  not  the  best  reader  any  more  than 
the  best  conductor  of  Beethoven  is  the  man  who  gets  through  the  "Eroica" 
in  the  shortest  elapsed  time.  Why  not  take  a  stop-watch  to  the  Symphony, 
if  this  is  your  measure?  Obviously  because  music  declares  its  own  pace. 
But  so  does  good  poetry.  By  rhyme,  by  the  word-values  of  the  poem,  by 
the  sequence  of  syllables,  and  by  all  these  taken  together,  good  poetry 
contains  its  own  notation.  "We  broke  the  brittle  bright  stubble  like  chaff" 


24  Reader 

can  no  more  be  read  at  the  same  rate  as  "Bury  the  great  duke  with  an 
Empire's  lamentation"  than  allegro  vivace  can  intelligently  be  played 
adagio. 

Point  two,  then:  leave  your  efficiency  out  of  this  and  look  for  the  notation 
within  the  poem.  Every  poem  is  in  part  an  effort  to  reconstruct  the  poet's 
speaking  voice.  Listen  for  it.  Listen  to  the  poet  on  records  and  at  public 
readings  (but  know  the  poems  well  before  you  do).  You  may  discover 
more  than  you  could  have  foreseen.  In  any  case  when  reading  a  book  of 
poems  you  must  be  prepared  to  linger.  That  thin  volume  will  take  at  least 
as  much  reading  as  a  detective  story. 

Third  (and  of  course  related  to  our  second  consideration):  read  it  aloud. 
Few  poems  will  come  whole  at  one  hearing.  Few  piano  pieces  will.  But 
once  you  have  learned  either,  their  pleasure  is  always  ready  to  repeat  itself. 
Even  difficult  poems  are  meant  to  go  into  the  voice-box.  Put  them  there. 

Fourth:  there  are  still  readers  who  must  be  specifically  cautioned  that 
twentieth-century  poetry  is  not  nineteenth-century  poetry.  That  fact  may 
seem  rather  obvious,  but  the  point  is  not  frivolously  made.  Your  teachers 
and  mine  were  products  of  nineteenth-century  culture,  and  almost  cer- 
tainly the  first  poems  you  were  given  to  read  were  nineteenth-century 
poems.  I  hasten  to  add  that  the  nineteenth  century  was  a  great  literary 
achievement,  but  it  began  with  one  dreadful  flaw:  it  tended  to  take  itself 
much  too  seriously.  The  mind  of  man  seemed  to  suffer  the  illusion  that  it 
lived  in  a  cathedral,  and  when  man  spoke  he  was  not  only  too  likely  to 
pontificate,  but  he  was  pre-inclined  to  select  from  experience  only  the  vast, 
the  lofty,  and  divine-in-nature.  The  result  was  what  Cleanth  Brooks  has 
called  "the  poetry  of  high-seriousness."  Opposed  to  that  tradition  is  the 
poetry  of  "wit/*  poetry  in  which  the  mind  most  definitely  does  not  live  in  a 
cathedral  but  in  the  total  world,  open  to  the  encounter  of  all  sorts  of 
diverse  elements  and  prepared  to  take  them  as  they  come,  fusing  fleas  and 
sunsets,  love  and  charley-horses,  beauty  and  trivia  into  what  is  conceived 
to  be  a  more  inclusive  range  of  human  experience.  Judge  the  poet  of  "wit" 
by  the  standards  of  "high-seriousness"  and  he  will  likely  appear  crass  and 
obnoxious;  judge  the  poet  of  high-seriousness  by  the  standards  of  wit  and 
he  will  likely  appear  a  rather  pompous  and  myopic  ass. 

The  point,  then,  is  quite  simple:  judge  the  poet  by  his  intent:  if  you 
tend  to  the  illusion  that  you  are  on  your  way  to  church  when  you  pick  up 
a  poem,  stop  off  at  the  super-market  and  watch  man  against  his  back- 
ground of  groceries  for  a  while.  The  church  is  still  next  door,  and  I  am 
quite  sure  that  one  of  the  things  "modern"  (whatever  that  is)  poetry  is 
trying  to  say,  is  that  the  cities  of  our  life  contain  both  church-spires  and 
Wheaties,  and  that  both  of  them,  for  better  or  worse,  impinge  upon  man's 
consciousness,  and  are  therefore  the  material  of  poetry. 

A  fifth  consideration  I  can  best  present  by  asking  a  question:  how  do 
you,  reader,  distinguish  between  your  responses  to  a  very  bad  portrait  of 
dear  old  Aunt  Jane,  and  a  very  good  one  of  Old  Skinflint,  the  gentleman 


Reading  as  Pleasure  and  Work  25 

who  holds  your  mortgage?  The  question  is  one  that  splits  the  reading 
audience  straight  down  the  middle:  The  tenacity  with  which  the  ladies  of 
the  poetry  societies  hold  on  to  Aunt  Jane  with  a  bluebird  in  her  hair,  and 
the  persistency  with  which  they  reject  all-that-is-not-bluebirds,  reaches  so 
far  into  the  problem  of  a  satisfactory  approach  to  poetry  (both  reading  and 
writing)  that  it  has  been  necessary  to  evolve  two  terms:  "poetry"  for  that 
which  exists  as  an  art  form,  "poesy"  for  that  which  exists  as  the  sentimental 
bluebird  in  Aunt  Jane's  hair.  Confusion  is  inevitable  when  these  terms  are 
not  properly  applied.  The  writers  and  readers  of  poesy  always  refer  to  their 
matter  as  poetry  or  true  poetry,  and  defend  it  with  as  much  violence  as 
possible  from  "the  ugly."  Here  is  a  piece  of  poesy  —  a  sonnet  of  course: 

THRENODY 

Truth  is  a  golden  sunset  far  away 

Above  the  misty  hills.    Its  burning  eye 

Lights  all  the  fading  world.   A  bird  flies  by 

Alive  and  singing  on  the  dying  day. 

Oh  mystic  world,  what  shall  the  proud  heart  say 

When  beauty  flies  on  beauty  beautifully 

While  blue-gold  hills  look  down  to  watch  it  die 

Into  the  falling  miracle  of  clay? 

Say:  "I  have  seen  the  wing  of  sunset  lift 

Into  the  golden  vision  of  the  hills 

And  truth  come  flooding  proud  through  the  cloud  rift 

And  known  that  souls  survive  their  mortal  ills." 

Say:  "Having  seen  such  beauty  in  the  air 

I  have  seen  truth  and  will  no  more  despair." 

This  is  a  fair  example  of  what  I  have  learned  to  call  "prop-room  poesy." 
It  fills  the  stage  as  a  poem  might,  but  it  fills  it  with  pieces  discarded  from 
6Jther  poems  and  left  to  gather  dust  in  the  prop-room  of  tradition.  It  makes 
a  stage  of  the  stage,  and  brings  the  stage's  own  dust  on  as  the  play,  rather 
than  bring  on  the  life  outside  the  theatre. 

The  result  may  look  like  a  poem,  but  is  really  no  more  than  a  collection 
of  poetic  junk.  For  example:  "golden  sunsets  far  away"  (question:  have 
you  ever  seen  a  non-golden  one  nearby?),  "misty  hills,"  "burning  eye," 
"fading  world,"  "a  bird  flies  by  alive  and  singing"  (question:  have  you 
ever  seen  a  non-live  one  fly  by?),  "dying  day,"  "the  proud  heart."  .  .  . 

I  have  tried  many  times  to  explain  to  the  enthusiasts  of  this  school  that 
any  reasonably  competent  craftsman  could  concoct  such  a  poem  in  a 
matter  of  minutes,  and  with  his  tongue  in  his  cheek.  I  said  exactly  that 
from  a  public  platform  once  and  claimed  I  could  turn  out  such  an  illusion- 
of-the-sonnet  in  three  minutes  flat.  I  was  challenged  and  given  a  first  line 
to  start  with,  but  I  failed.  I  discovered  it  is  impossible,  simply  mechani- 
cally, to  write  off  fourteen  lines  in  three  minutes.  It  took  four  minutes  and 
eighteen  seconds.  The  "sonnet"  I  have  quoted  above  was  the  poem  pro- 


26  Reader 

duced  in  answer  to  that  challenge,  and  by  way  of  further  experimentation 
I  sent  it  off  to  a  magazine  for  "traditional"  poetry  and  had  it  accepted  for 
publication.  In  a  moment  of  cowardice  I  withdrew  the  poem  for  fear 
someone  I  respected  might  see  my  name  attached  to  it.  I  was  wrong,  of 
course;  no  one  whose  poetic  opinion  I  could  respect  would  have  been 
reading  that  magazine. 

The  fact  remains  beyond  all  persuasion,  however,  that  the  devotees  of 
poesy  are  violent  in  their  charges  against  Modern  Poetry  (their  capitals) 
as  ugly,  coarse,  immoral,  and  debased  (their  adjectives).  My  good  friend 
Geraldine  Udell,  business  manager  of  Poetry,  a  Magazine  of  Verse,  the 
oldest  magazine  of  good  poetry  in  America,  once  showed  me  thirty-four 
letters  received  in  one  day's  mail  accusing  the  magazine  of  debasing  the 
pure  tradition  of  English  poetry,  and  enclosing  pages  of  poesy  from  two 
magazines  of  "traditional  poetry"  as  specimens  of  what  should  be  printed. 

It  is,  you  see,  Aunt  Jane  and  Old  Skinflint  with  a  vengeance.  Poesy 
(which  is  always  anti-poetry)  wants  it  pretty.  It  wants  comfortably  worn- 
out  props  to  which  comfortable  and  vague  reactions  are  already  condi- 
tioned. Everyone  understands  the  bluebird  in  Aunt  Jane's  hair;  the  re- 
sponse to  it  is  by  now  so  stereotyped  that  it  will  do  for  a  birthday  card. 
Poetry,  on  the  contrary,  insists  on  battering  at  life,  and  on  making  the 
poem  capture  the  thing  seen  and  felt  in  its  own  unique  complex.  It  does 
not  repeat,  it  creates.  Therefore,  some  willingness  to  dismiss  preconcep- 
tion from  the  reader's  mind  is  necessary  if  one  is  to  partake  of  the  vital 
process.  One  is  also  required  to  get  himself  and  his  own  loose-afflatus  out 
of  the  way  of  the  poem. 

The  fifth  point  then  is  simple:  poesy  is  not  poetry. 

A  sixth  and  related  consideration  follows  almost  immediately:  it  con- 
cerns the  preconception  that  demands  moral  affirmation  of  oneself  from  a 
poem,  just  as  poesy  demands  a  loose  emotional  affirmation  of  oneself.  Con- 
sistently adhered  to,  this  application  of  one's  own  morality  as  a  test  of  the 
poem  can  lead  to  ridiculous  ends.  It  would  require,  for  example,  the  re- 
jection of  Milton  by  all  who  do  not  agree  with  his  theology.  It  might  reject 
beforehand  all  poems  containing  the  word  harlot,  since  harlots  are  immoral, 
and  by  that  test  we  should  have  to  reject  such  great  lines  as  Blake's: 

The  harlot's  cry  from  street  to  street 
Shall  weave  Old  England's  winding  sheet. 

Or,  shifted  to  politick!  concern,  it  might  require  a  new  Communist  mani- 
festo against  any  poem  in  which  the  lover  is  rich  in  his  love,  since  it  is 
bourgeois,  decadent,  and  just  plain  indecent  to  be  rich. 

Similarly,  I  have  observed  many  present-day  reviewers  to  reject  a  poem 
because  it  seems  cheerful  ("withdrawal  from  reality"),  because  it  does  not 
("defeatist  and  negativist"),  because  it  is  immediately  understandable 
("facile  and  slight"),  and  because  it  requires  rereading  ("obscurantist"). 
These  are  cartoons,  of  course,  but  they  are  cartoons  of  a  real  trend.  The 


Reading  as  Pleasure  and  Work  27 

simple  fact  is  that  none  of  us  can  hope  to  be  wholly  free  of  preconceptions 
of  one  sort  or  another.  I  must  confess,  for  example,  that  I  still  find  Milton's 
theology  a  bit  silly,  and  that  my  feeling  prevents  me  from  experiencing 
"Paradise  Lost"  as  richly  as  I  might.  Even  Milton's  language  creates  blocks 
for  me  that  he  could  not  have  intended  and  for  which  I  am  solely  responsi- 
ble. For  whatever  reason,  I  cannot  read  of  Satan  mounted  on  his  "bad 
eminence"  without  an  impulse  to  smile.  I  don't  know  why  I  want  to  smile 
at  such  a  phrase,  but  I  am  sure  the  reason  is  within  me  and  that  it  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  poem.  I  am  being  blocked  in  this  case  by  a  pre-set 
subjective  response.  I  must,  therefore,  recognize  the  obstruction  and  try 
to  allow  for  it.  Unless  I  can  do  so,  I  am  not  permitting  the  poet  his  right  to 
his  own  kind  of  vision  and  existence. 

Point  six,  then:  the  poem  does  not  exist  to  confirm  moral,  political,  or 
religious  pre-judgments.  The  poem  as  a  poem  is  in  fact  amoral.  The  poem, 
I  say,  not  the  poet.  The  poet  may  be  the  most  moral  of  men,  but  when  he 
writes  poetry  he  is  performing  a  ritual  dance.  He  may  even  sermonize,  but 
if  the  poem  is  to  succeed  as  a  poem,  it  must  be  a  dancing  sermon.  What 
the  poem  says  is  always  hickory-dickory-dock,  that  ineffable,  wonderful, 
everlasting  dance  of  syllables  that  moves  the  mouse  and  winds  the  clock 
over  and  over  again,  and  sends  the  child  to  sleep  among  the  swinging 
nebulae.  Or  perhaps  it  is  hickory-dickory-God,  but  still  what  the  poem 
says  is  what  the  child  dreams:  "Look,  Universe,  I'm  dancing."  There  is  no 
immorality  more  wretched  than  the  habit  of  mind  which  will  insist  on 
moralizing  that  dance. 

The  last  necessity  for  good  reading  that  I  shall  discuss  here  is  tradition. 
If  you  will  grant  me  the  existence  of  an  unintellectualized  basis  for  poetry 
upon  which  the  responses  of  all  readers  may  meet,  we  can  probably  agree 
that  a  fair  example  of  such  a  response  may  be  found  in,  say,  Juliet  on  her 
balcony  swooning  into  moonlight  at  the  sound  of  Romeo's  song  rising  from 
the  shrubbery.  Hers  is  centainly  a  non-intellectualized  response.  And  a 
worldwide  one:  Black  Jade  in  her  moony  garden  in  Peiping  will  respond 
in  an  almost  identical  way  to  Pao-yii's  serenade  from  beyond  the  garden 
wall. 

But  wait;  let  us  switch  singers.  Now  Pao-yii  is  in  Verona  under  Juliet's 
balcony,  and  Romeo  is  in  Peiping  outside  Black  Jade's  garden.  Both  strike 
up  a  song.  Why  is  it  that  both  girls  now  hear  not  a  swooning  love-cry  but 
something  closer  to  the  sound  of  sustained  gargling?  The  answer  is  — 
Tradition. 

For  the  fact  is  we  are  being  educated  when  we  know  it  least.  We  learn 
simply  by  the  exposure  of  living,  and  what  we  learn  most  natively  is  the 
tradition  in  which  we  live.  But  the  response  acquired  effortlessly  within 
one  tradition  will  not  serve  us  in  another,  any  more  than  speaking  pure 
Tuscan  will  help  us  in  Peiping. 

In  order  to  read  poetry,  then,  one  must  read  poetry.  One  may  of  course 
have  read  only  bad  poetry,  and  in  that  case  he  will  read  badly.  The 


28  Reader 

criterion  Matthew  Arnold  set  forth  as  "the  touchstone  method"  may  well 
be  applied  here.  This  critical  theory  states  simply  that  all  poetry  is 
judged  by  great  poetry.  Poetry  may  be  called  great  only  when  it  has  been 
acclaimed  by  so  many  generations  of  different  poetical  taste  that  its  merit 
and  universality  are  beyond  dispute.  The  way  to  come  to  a  poem,  then,  is 
with  memory  of  great  singing  in  one's  inner  ear. 

Greatness,  however,  can  be  a  dangerous  measure,  for  it  immediately  im- 
plies rendering  a  verdict.  I  for  one  cannot  lose  the  belief  that  it  is  more 
important  to  experience  the  poem  than  to  judge  it.  Certainly  there  is  real 
pleasure  to  be  had  from  poetry  no  one  will  ever  consider  great  or  near- 
great.  Certainly,  too,  every  mental  action  implies  a  kind  of  judgment. 
Nevertheless,  it  seems  to  me  more  desirable  in  every  way  for  the  reader  to 
conceive  of  himself  as  a  participant  in  the  action  of  the  poem,  rather  than 
as  a  trial  judge  pondering  its  claim  to  immortality. 

Time,  of  course,  will  hand  down  that  verdict,  and  in  a  way  from  which 
there  is  no  appeal.  It  may  then  happen  that  the  verdict  will  be  against 
modern  poets,  and  against  the  principles  on  which  they  write.  But  until 
that  verdict  has  been  achieved,  it  would  be  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  the 
reader  is  as  liable  to  error  as  the  poet,  and  that  when  the  poem  fails  to 
communicate,  the  failure  may  as  reasonably  be  charged  against  the  one  as 
against  the  other. 

Poetry 

^Marianne  JWoore  •  f887- 

J$*  For  a  comment  on  this  poem,  see  the  note  which  precedes  Mr. 
Ciardi's  essay,  on  page  20. 

I,  TOO,  dislike  it:  there  are  things  that  are  important 

beyond  all  this  fiddle. 
Reading  it,  however,  with  a  perfect  contempt  for  it,  one 

discovers  in 

it  after  all,  a  place  for  the  genuine. 
Hands  that  can  grasp,  eyes 
that  can  dilate,  hair  that  can  rise 

if  it  must,  these  things  are  important  not  because  a 

high-sounding  interpretation  can  be  put  upon  them  but 

because  they  are 

useful.  When  they  become  so  derivative  as  to  become 
unintelligible, 

Marianne  Moore,  Collected  Poems  (New  York:  The  Macmillan  Company,  1951). 
Copyright,  1951,  by  Marianne  Moore.  Reprinted  by  permission  of  The  Macmillan  Com- 
pany. 


Reading  as  Pleasure  and  Work  29 

the  same  thing  may  be  said  for  all  of  us,  that  we 
do  not  admire  what 
we  cannot  understand:  the  bat 
holding  on  upside  down  or  in  quest  of  something  to 

eat,  elephants  pushing,  a  wild  horse  taking  a  roll,  a  tire- 
less wolf  under 
a  tree,  the  immovable  critic  twitching  his  skin  like  a 

horse  that  feels  a  flea,  the  base- 
ball fan,  the  statistician  — 
nor  is  it  valid 

to  discriminate  against  "business  documents  and 

school-books";  all  these  phenomena  are  important.   One 

must  make  a  distinction 
however:  when  dragged  into  prominence  by  half  poets, 

the  result  is  not  poetry, 
nor  till  the  poets  among  us  can  be 
"literalists  of 
the  imagination"  —  above 

insolence  and  triviality  and  can  present 

for  inspection,  "imaginary  gardens  with  real  toads  in  them,* 

shall  we  have 

it.   In  the  meantime,  if  you  demand  on  the  one  hand, 
the  raw  material  of  poetry  in 
all  its  rawness  and 
that  which  is  on  the  other  hand 
genuine,  you  are  interested  in  poetry. 


Some  Readers 
at  Work 


"I  suddenly  sensed  that  I  was 
being  followed." 


Here  Lies  Miss  Groby    *> 

Barnes  Jhurber  •  48P5- 


Here  we  introduce  one  who  needs  no  introduction  —  who  doesn't 
know  Miss  Groby,  under  whatever  name?  Teaching  us  literature,  so 
she  supposes,  she  can't  see  the  woods  for  the  trees,  or  to  apply  Thurber's 
figure,  she  confuses  the  container  with  the  thing  contained. 

Miss  GROBY  taught  me  English  composition  thirty  years  ago.  It  wasn't 
what  prose  said  that  interested  Miss  Groby;  it  was  the  way  prose  said  it. 
The  shape  of  a  sentence  crucified  on  a  blackboard  (parsed,  she  called  it) 
brought  a  light  to  her  eye.  She  hunted  for  Topic  Sentences  and  Transi- 
tional Sentences  the  way  little  girls  hunt  for  white  violets  in  springtime. 
What  she  loved  most  of  all  were  Figures  of  Speech.  You  remember  her. 
You  must  have  had  her,  too.  Her  influence  will  never  die  out  of  the  land. 
A  small  schoolgirl  asked  me  the  other  day  if  I  could  give  her  an  example 
of  metonymy.  (There  are  several  kinds  of  metonymies,  you  may  recall, 
but  the  one  that  will  come  to  mind  most  easily,  I  think,  is  Container  for 

Reprinted  by  permission  of  the  author.  Copyright,  1942,  The  New  Yorker  Magazine, 
Inc. 

30 


Some  Readers  at  Work  31 

the  Thing  Contained.)  The  vision  of  Miss  Groby  came  clearly  before  me 
when  the  little  girl  mentioned  the  old,  familiar  word.  I  saw  her  sitting  at 
her  desk,  taking  the  rubber  band  off  the  roll-call  cards,  running  it  back 
upon  the  fingers  of  her  right  hand,  and  surveying  us  all  separately  with 
quick  little  henlike  turns  of  her  head. 

Here  lies  Miss  Groby,  not  dead,  I  think,  but  put  away  on  a  shelf  with 
the  other  T  squares  and  rulers  whose  edges  had  lost  their  certainty.  The 
fierce  light  that  Miss  Groby  brought  to  English  literature  was  the  light  of 
Identification.  Perhaps,  at  the  end,  she  could  no  longer  retain  the  dates  of 
the  birth  and  death  of  one  of  the  Lake  poets.  That  would  have  sent  her 
to  the  principal  of  the  school  with  her  resignation.  Or  perhaps  she  could 
not  remember,  finally,  exactly  how  many  Cornishmen  there  were  who  had 
sworn  that  Trelawny  should  not  die,  or  precisely  how  many  springs  were 
left  to  Housman's  lad  in  which  to  go  about  the  woodlands  to  see  the  cherry 
hung  with  snow. 

Verse  was  one  of  Miss  Groby's  delights  because  there  was  so  much  in 
both  its  form  and  content  that  could  be  counted.  I  believe  she  would  have 
got  an  enormous  thrill  out  of  Wordsworth's  famous  lines  about  Lucy  if 
they  had  been  written  this  way: 

A  violet  by  a  mossy  stone 
Half  hidden  from  the  eye, 
Fair  as  a  star  when  ninety-eight 
Are  shining  in  the  sky. 

It  is  hard  for  me  to  believe  that  Miss  Groby  ever  saw  any  famous  work 
of  literature  from  far  enough  away  to  know  what  it  meant.  She  was  for- 
ever climbing  up  the  margins  of  books  and  crawling  between  their  lines, 
hunting  for  the  little  gold  of  phrase,  making  marks  with  a  pencil.  As 
Palamides  hunted  the  Questing  Beast,  she  hunted  the  Figure  of  Speech. 
She  hunted  it  through  the  clangorous  halls  of  Shakespeare  and  through  the 
green  forests  of  Scott. 

Night  after  night,  for  homework,  Miss  Groby  set  us  to  searching  in 
"Ivanhoe"  and  "Julius  Caesar"  for  metaphors,  similes,  metonymies,  apos- 
trophes, personifications,  and  all  the  rest.  It  got  so  that  figures  of  speech 
jumped  out  of  the  pages  at  you,  obscuring  the  sense  and  pattern  of  the 
novel  or  play  you  were  trying  to  read.  "Friends,  Romans,  countrymen, 
lend  me  your  ears."  Take  that,  for  instance.  There  is  an  unusual  but  perfect 
example  of  Container  for  the  Thing  Contained.  If  you  read  the  funeral 
oration  unwarily  —  that  is  to  say,  for  its  meaning  —  you  might  easily  miss 
the  C.F.T.T.C.  Antony  is,  of  course,  not  asking  for  their  ears  in  the  sense 
that  he  wants  them  cut  off  and  handed  over;  he  is  asking  for  the  function 
of  those  ears,  for  their  power  to  hear,  for,  in  a  word,  the  thing  they  contain. 

At  first  I  began  to  fear  that  all  the  characters  in  Shakespeare  and  Scott 
were  crazy.  They  confused  cause  with  effect,  the  sign  for  the  thing  signified, 


32  Reader 

the  thing  held  for  the  thing  holding  it.  But  after  a  while  I  began  to  sus- 
pect that  it  was  I  myself  who  was  crazy.  I  would  find  myself  lying  awake  at 
night  saying  over  and  over,  "The  thinger  for  the  thing  contained."  In  a 
great  but  probably  misguided  attempt  to  keep  my  mind  on  its  hinges,  I 
would  stare  at  the  ceiling  and  try  to  think  of  an  example  of  the  Thing 
Contained  for  the  Container.  It  struck  me  as  odd  that  Miss  Groby  had 
never  thought  of  that  inversion.  I  finally  hit  on  one,  which  I  still  remem- 
ber. If  a  woman  were  to  grab  up  a  bottle  of  Grade  A  and  say  to  her  hus- 
band, "Get  away  from  me  or  I'll  hit  you  with  the  milk,"  that  would  be  a 
Thing  Contained  for  the  Container.  The  next  day  in  class  I  raised  my 
hand  and  brought  my  curious  discovery  straight  out  before  Miss  Groby  and 
my  astonished  schoolmates.  I  was  eager  and  serious  about  it  and  it  never 
occurred  to  me  that  the  other  children  would  laugh.  They  laughed  loudly 
and  long.  When  Miss  Groby  had  quieted  them  she  said  to  me  rather  coldly, 
"That  was  not  really  amusing,  James."  That's  the  mixed-up  kind  of  thing 
that  happened  to  me  in  my  teens. 

In  later  years  I  came  across  another  excellent  example  of  this  figure  of 
speech  in  a  joke  long  since  familiar  to  people  who  know  vaudeville  or 
burlesque  (or  radio,  for  that  matter).  It  goes  something  like  this: 

A:  What's  your  head  all  bandaged  up  for? 

B:  I  got  hit  with  some  tomatoes. 

A:  How  could  that  bruise  you  up  so  bad? 

B:  These  tomatoes  were  in  a  can. 

I  wonder  what  Miss  Groby  would  have  thought  of  that  one. 

I  dream  of  my  old  English  teacher  occasionally.  It  seems  that  we  are 
always  in  Sherwood  Forest  and  that  from  far  away  I  can  hear  Robin  Hood 
winding  his  silver  horn. 

"Drat  that  man  for  making  such  a  racket  on  his  cornetl"  cries  Miss 
Groby.  "He  scared  away  a  perfectly  darling  Container  for  the  Thing  Con- 
tained, a  great,  big,  beautiful  one.  It  leaped  right  back  into  its  context 
when  that  man  blew  that  cornet.  It  was  the  most  wonderful  Container  for 
the  Thing  Contained  I  ever  saw  here  in  the  Forest  of  Arden." 

"This  is  Sherwood  Forest,"  I  say  to  her. 

That  doesn't  make  any  difference  at  all  that  I  can  see,"  she  says  to  me. 

Then  I  wake  up,  tossing  and  moaning. 


Clutter  Counters  Everywhere    «* 

W.  B.  Scott  •  4907- 


A  good  reader  won't  be  imposed  on.  He  sees  through  the  strategy 
by  which  a  writer  tries  to  make  him  follow  a  certain  line  of  thought, 
and  mates  up  his  own  mind  whether  he  wants  to  go  along  or  not. 
W.  B.  Scott  in  this  humorous  essay  examines  a  piece  of  sales-promotion 
literature.  The  phrase  "clutter  counters  everywhere"  reminds  him  of 
the  protean  phrase  "Haveth  Childers  Everywhere"  in  James  Joyce's 
Finnegans  Wake.  (The  drawings  in  this  book  are  also  Mr.  Scott's 
work.) 

MANY  MONTHS  AGO  the  writer  of  this  Bulletin  received  a  circular  letter  from 
the  New  York  Herald  Tribune.  The  letter  struck  him  with  such  force  that 
he  immediately  ceased  the  academic  routine  he  had  been  engaged  in  when 
it  arrived  —  tearing  student  papers  into  strips,  doodling,  staring  pensively 
through  the  window,  going  for  a  drink  of  water,  winding  his  watch,  jotting 
down  reminders  to  himself  about  the  nature  of  tragedy,  poking  at  a  cavity, 
consulting  the  dictionary  for  the  meaning  of  a  word  he  had  pretended 
to  understand  when  a  colleague  used  it  at  lunch,  thumbing  through  Time, 
briskly  bringing  his  desk  calendar  up  to  date  —  and  settled  down  to  think 
about  it  (the  letter)  and  what  it  might  portend.  He  is  tired  of  thinking 
about  it  now,  and  hopes  to  purge  himself  of  it  by  getting  it  into  print,  to- 
gether with  a  few  of  the  questions  it  has  raised. 

Dear  Sir:  [the  Herald  Tribune  begins] 
In  these  crowded  days  .  .  . 

.  .  .  when  69,392,699  magazines  are  published  each  week 
.  .  .  when  busty  pocket-books  (the  latter-day  dime  novel)  clutter  counters 
everywhere 

.  .  .  when  TV  is  revolutionizing  the  pattern  of  American  entertainment 
.  .  .  and  when  Western  culture  is  facing  its  greatest  threat  since  Charles  V 
threw  back  the  Turks 

are  you  finding  it  hard  to  keep  your  students  abreast  of  the  really  GOOD  — 
the  really  IMPORTANT  —  books  being  published  in  the  U.S.?  Would  you 
welcome  —  at  no  expense  to  you  or  YOUR  COLLEGE  —  the  weekly  assist- 
ance of  the  foremost  critics  and  authors  writing  today? 

(There's  more  to  the  letter,  but  let's  stop  here.) 

From  Fwriott),  Winter,  1951.   Reprinted  by  permission  of  the  author  and  by  courtesy 
of  Reed  Whittemore,  editor  of  Furioso. 

33 


34  Reader 

Now  it's  clear,  in  the  first  place,  that  to  such  questions  only  a  chump  or 
a  traitor  could  unequivocally  answer,  "Nol",  so  packed  are  these  questions 
with  all  that  an  American  holds  dear  —  overwhelming  statistics,  the  bust 
on  the  pocket  book  (or  was  this  a  misprint  for  dusty?1),  the  historical 
parallel  with  its  flattering  implications  that  the  reader  knows  all  about 
Charles  V  and  the  Turks,  plus  a  chance  to  get  something  for  nothing.  And 
when  the  letter  goes  on  to  assert  (as  it  does)  that  the  Herald  Tribune 
BOOK  REVIEW  Magazine  Section  is  "generally  accepted  from  coast  to 
coast  as  THE  authoritative  publication  in  the  field  of  literary  criticism," 
the  impulsive  recipient  of  the  letter  is  likely  to  hustle  his  note  of  acceptance 
off  to  the  post  office  without  even  bothering  to  turn  out  the  office  lights  or 
straighten  his  tie. 

But  the  writer  of  this  Bulletin  is  not  an  impulsive  recipient,  or  at  any 
rate  an  impulsive  letter-answerer,  partly  owing  to  a  firmly-rooted  habit  of 
not  answering  letters  until  months  or  years  have  passed,  and  partly  be- 
cause an  early  training  in  scientific  method  taught  him  to  jump  at  conclu- 
sions only  when  he  feels  like  it.  He  did  not  feel  like  it  in  this  case,  pre- 
ferring (the  scientific  method  churning  up  in  his  memory)  simply  to  ask 
a  few  questions  and  suggest  a  few  tentative  answers.  Here  are  the  ques- 
tions. There's  nothing  very  systematic  to  them  —  you  can  get  just  so  much 
mileage  out  of  the  scientific  method. 

( 1 )  Is  it  really  true  that  69,392,699  magazines  are  published  each  week,  or 
did  the  promotion  people  at  the  Herald  Tribune,  working  under  a  terrific 
pressure  to  get  the  letter  in  the  mail,  simply  grab  that  number  out  of  the 
air?   It  is  the  sort  of  number  that  sounds  right,  as  plain  round  numbers 
would  not,  and  the  writer  of  this  Bulletin  is  perfectly  happy  to  accept  it. 
But  he  would  like  to  know  for  sure  before  he  risks  tossing  it  out  at  a 
cocktail  party  (after  painfully  memorizing  it),  only  to  have  the  campus 
precisionist  snort,   "Nonsense!"  or  "Rubbish!"  in  the  decisive  way  the 
campus  precisionist  has  of  snorting  these  words.    Moreover,  the  campus 
precisionist  is  sure  to  go  on  and  ask  something  shattering  like,  "How 
about  certain  magazines  —  The  Hudson   Review,  for  example  —  which 
are  not  published  each  week?"    (He  might  ask,  "How  about  Furioso?", 
but  being  a  campus  precisionist  is  not  likely  to.)    Well,  how  about  it? 
Or  doesn't  the  Herald  Tribune  count  non-weekly  publications  as  maga- 
zines?   If  not,  why  not?    What  sort  of  big-city  journalistic  arrogance  is 
involved  here? 

(2)  Is  "clutter  counters  everywhere"  a  deliberate  echo  of  Joyce  on  the 
part  of  some  suppressed  genius  in  the  Herald  Tribune's  circular-letter  plant, 
or  is  it  one  of  those  fragments  of  accidental  poetry  which  the  world  could 
ill  do  without?  If  it  is  a  muted  scrap  of  song  by  a  hidden  genius,  is  this 

1  Not  likely,  given  the  Herald  Tribune's  reputation  for  accuracy,  and  the  fact  that 
pocket  books  are  usually  placed,  not  on  counters,  but  in  racks  with  plenty  of  circulation, 
and  are  thus  less  likely  to  get  dusty  than  to  get  tattered  or  dog-eared  from  being 
brushed  up  against  by  people  rushing  for  trains  or  hurrying  to  have  prescriptions 
filled.  [Author.] 


Some  Readers  at  Work  35 

genius  also  responsible  for  the  rather  snide  distinction  implied  in  "foremost 
critics  and  authors'?  Can  it  be  that  this  genius,  heavy  with  unborn  novels 
and  plays,  an  "author"  in  his  own  mind,  is  getting  a  bit  of  his  own  back 
( in  advance )  by  this  devious  belittlement  of  critics?  Would  this  genius  do 
better  to  become  an  English  instructor,  given  his  tendency  to  phrases  like 
"the  latter-day  dime  novel"?  At  all  events,  what  personal  tragedies  lie  hid- 
den behind  the  fagades  of  great  metropolitan  newspapers  anyhow? 

(3)  If  the  recipient  of  the  letter  has  a  sense  of  fair  play  (as  every  de- 
fender of  Western  culture  has,  including  nowadays  the  Turks),  he's  sure 
to  raise  some  questions  about  the  New  York  Times  Book  Review  and  The 
Saturday  Review  of  Literature  before  he  decides  to  throw  in  with  the 
Herald  Tribune  crowd.   And  surely  those  publications  themselves  are  not 
going  to  take  lying  down  the  assertion  that  the  Herald  Tribune  BOOK 
REVIEW  Magazine  Section  is  generally  accepted  from  coast  to  coast  as 
THE  authoritative  publication  in  the  field  of  literary  criticism.    (No  doubt 
they  have  long  since  let  fly  with  their  counter  punches,  but  the  writer  of 
this  Bulletin  is  apparently  not  on  their  mailing  lists. ) 

All  the  same,  what  is  a  conscientious  teacher,  the  dark  splintery  corridor 
outside  his  office  jammed  with  restless,  chattering  students  demanding  to 
be  kept  abreast  of  the  really  GOOD  —  the  really  IMPORTANT  —  books 
being  published  in  the  U.S.  —  what  is  such  a  teacher  to  do?  Read  all 
three?  God  forbid!  Read  none  of  them?  That  way,  in  our  culture,  lies  loss 
of  face  at  the  very  least.  One  thing  he  might  do,  before  he  goes  over  to 
the  Herald  Tribune,  is  to  demand  that  its  critics  and  authors  be  able  to 
match  or  top  certain  touchstone  passages  from  the  publication  he  is  al- 
ready committed  to.  For  instance,  if  he  is  a  Saturday  Review  boy,  he 
might  ask  the  Herald  Tribune  if  it  can  come  up  with  anything  to  equal  this 
from  the  SRL:  "In  this  novel  Edward  Lyons  exhibits  certain  qualities  that 
may  produce  a  writer  who  will  have  enough  to  say,  and  who  will  say  it 
dramatically  enough  to  assure  himself  a  certain  future." 

Or,  he  might  ask,  "How  are  the  Herald  Tribune's  triple-adjectives  com- 
pared with  the  following  sampling  from  the  Saturday  Review?"  —  "re- 
vealing, competent,  and  important,"  "beguiling,  intelligent,  and  well  done," 
"colorful,  provocative,  completely  absorbing,"  "absorbing,  fast-moving,  and 
plausible,"  "simple,  moving,  horrifying,"  "smooth,  unpretentious,  dove- 
colored  writing,"  "dim,  well-intentioned,  squirming"  (this  last  triplet  from 
a  review  in  which  a  character  is  compared  to  a  sea-anemone  —  what  do  the 
Herald  Tribune  people  know  about  sea-anemones?). 

If  the  Herald  Tribune  can  tie  or  surpass  these,  well  and  good.  If  not,  let 
it  wheedle  and  flatter  as  it  will;  the  canny  recipient  of  its  propaganda  will 
stick  to  his  SRL  (or  his  Times  Book  Review),  Charles  V  and  the  Turks  or 
no  Charles  V  and  the  Turks. 

(4)  Finally,  what  about  the  statement,  "at  no  expense  to  you  or  YOUR 
COLLEGE"?  Why  'TOUR  COLLEGE"  in  caps  and  "you"  in  lower  case? 
Do  we  have  here  an  instance  of  the  tendency  in  our  society  to  put  institu- 


36  Reader 

tions  ahead  of  people?  How  about  human  dignity?  Or  is  the  Herald  Trib- 
une cynically  suggesting  that  the  recipient  of  its  letter  is  the  kind  of  person 
who  will  immediately  hoof  it  around  to  the  Chairman  or  the  Dean  to 
present  this  little  scheme  for  saving  money  for  the  college,  while  inciden- 
tally calling  favorable  attention  to  himself?  Are  there  such  persons  in 
American  higher  education?  Or  is  this  an  appeal  —  even  more  cynical  in 
effect  —  to  some  sort  of  school  spirit  on  the  part  of  the  faculty?  The  an- 
swer is  not  clear,  but  behind  these  words  we  sense  the  New  York  promoter, 
sleekly  and  expensively  tailored  as  befits  the  Herald  Tribune  —  yet  with 
all  his  glossy  exterior,  his  savoir  faire,  his  memories  of  the  first  night  of 
South  Pacific,  a  blood  brother  to  the  duke  in  Huckleberry  Finn,  with  his 
cynical,  'There,  if  that  line  don't  fetch  them  I  don't  know  Arkansawl" 


Better  tell  those  students  in  the  corridor  to  come  back  after  lunch. 


The  Idealist   &         frank  O'Cowwor  •  1903- 


Reading  has  its  dangers.  An  Irish  schoolboy  finds  this  out  in 
Frank  O'Connor's  story.  But  look  for  more  in  the  story  than  this  dis- 
covery and  the  boy's  wonderful,  bitter  conclusion  about  teachers;  for 
Mr.  O'Connor,  one  of  the  most  skillful  short-story  writers  not  only  of 
Ireland  but  of  our  time,  has  implied  far  more  than  he  has  stated  in 
what  at  first  seems  a  simple  anecdote. 

READING?  I  was  never  struck  on  it.   It  never  did  anything  for  me  but  get 
me  into  trouble. 

Adventure  stories  weren't  so  bad,  but  as  a  kid  I  was  very  serious  and 
always  preferred  realism  to  romance.  School  stories  were  what  I  liked 
best.  The  trouble  was  that  even  they  seemed  to  be  a  bit  far-fetched,  judg- 
ing by  our  standards.  The  schools  were  English  and  quite  different  to  the 
one  I  attended.  They  were  always  called  "the  venerable  pile,"  and  there 
was  usually  a  ghost  in  them;  they  were  built  in  a  square  that  was  called 
the  "quad,"  and,  to  judge  by  the  pictures,  were  all  clock-towers,  spires  and 
pinnacles  like  the  lunatic  asylum  with  us.  The  fellows  in  the  stories  were 
all  good  climbers,  and  used  to  get  in  and  out  of  the  school  at  night  on  ropes 
made  of  knotted  sheets.  They  dressed  queerly;  they  wore  long  trousers, 
short  black  jackets  and  top-hats.  When  they  did  anything  wrong  they  were 

Reprinted  from  The  Stories  of  Frank  O'Connor  by  permission  of  Alfred  A.  Knopf, 
Inc.,  and  by  A.  D.  Peters,  London,  England.  Copyright,  1950,  1952,  by  Frank  O'Connor. 
Originally  published  in  The  New  Yorker. 


Some  Readers  at  Work  37 

given  "lines."  When  it  was  a  bad  case  they  were  flogged,  and  never  showed 
any  sign  of  pain,  only  the  bad  fellows,  and  they  always  said  "Ow!  Owl" 

Mostly,  they  were  grand  chaps  who  always  stuck  together  and  were  great 
at  football  and  cricket.  They  never  told  lies,  and  anyone  who  did,  they 
wouldn't  talk  to  him.  If  they  were  caught  out  and  asked  a  point-blank 
question,  they  always  told  the  truth,  unless  someone  else  was  in  it  along 
with  them,  and  then  wild  horses  wouldn't  get  them  to  split,  even  if  the 
other  fellow  was  a  thief,  which,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  frequently  was.  It 
was  surprising  in  such  good  schools,  with  fathers  who  never  gave  them 
less  than  five  quid,  the  number  of  thieves  there  were.  The  fellows  I  knew 
hardly  ever  stole,  even  though  they  only  got  a  penny  a  week,  and  some- 
times not  even  that  when  their  fathers  were  on  the  booze  and  their  mothers 
had  to  go  to  the  pawn. 

I  worked  hard  at  the  football  and  cricket,  though,  of  course,  we  never 
had  a  proper  football,  and  the  sort  of  cricket  we  played  was  with  a  hurley 
stick  against  a  wicket  chalked  on  some  wall.  The  officers  in  the  barrack 
played  proper  cricket,  and  I  used  to  go  up  on  summer  evenings  to  see  them. 

Even  so,  I  couldn't  help  being  disgusted  at  the  bad  way  things  were  run 
in  our  school.  Our  venerable  pile  was  a  red-brick  building  without  tower 
or  pinnacle  a  fellow  could  climb,  and  no  ghost  at  all;  we  had  no  team,  so 
a  fellow,  no  matter  how  hard  he  worked,  could  never  play  for  the  school, 
and  nobody  had  ever  thought  of  giving  us  lines.  Instead  Murderer  Molony 
either  lifted  you  by  the  ears  or  bashed  you  with  a  cane. 

But  these  were  only  superficial  things.  What  was  really  wrong  was  our- 
selves. The  fellows  sucked  up  to  the  masters  and  told  them  everything  that 
went  on.  If  they  were  caught  out  they  tried  to  put  the  blame  on  somebody 
else,  even  if  it  meant  telling  lies.  If  they  were  caned,  they  snivelled  and 
said  it  wasn't  fair;  drew  back  their  hands  the  least  shade  as  if  they  were 
terrified,  so  that  the  cane  only  caught  the  top  of  their  fingers,  and  then 
screamed  and  stood  on  one  leg,  and  shook  their  fingers  out  in  hopes  of 
getting  it  counted  as  one.  Finally  they  roared  that  their  wrist  was  broken, 
and  crawled  back  to  their  desks  with  their  hands  squeezed  under  their 
armpits,  howling.  I  mean,  you  couldn't  help  feeling  ashamed,  imagining 
what  chaps  from  a  decent  school  would  think  if  they  saw  it. 

My  way  to  school  led  me  past  the  barrack  gate.  In  those  peaceful  days 
the  English  sentries  never  minded  you  going  past  the  guardroom  to  have 
a  look;  if  you  came  at  dinnertime  they  even  called  you  in  and  gave  you 
plum  duff  and  tea.  Naturally,  with  such  a  temptation  on  my  way,  I  was 
often  late.  When  you  were  late,  the  only  excuse,  short  of  a  letter  from 
your  mother,  was  to  say  you  were  at  early  Mass.  The  Murderer  would 
never  know  whether  you  were  or  not,  and  if  he  did  anything  to  you,  you 
could  easily  get  him  into  trouble  with  the  parish  priest.  Even  as  kids  we 
all  knew  who  the  real  boss  of  the  school  was. 

But  after  I  had  started  reading  school  stories  I  was  always  a  bit  uneasy 
about  saying  I  was  at  Mass.  It  was  a  lie,  and  I  knew  the  chaps  in  the 


38  Reader 

stories  would  never  have  told  it.  They  were  all  round  me  like  invisible 
presences,  and  I  hated  to  do  anything  they  wouldn't  approve  of. 

One  morning  I  was  very  late. 

"What  kept  you  till  this  hour,  Regan?"  asked  Murderer  Molony,  looking 
at  the  clock. 

I  wanted  to  say  I  was  at  Mass  but  I  couldn't.  The  invisible  presences 
were  all  round  me. 

"I  delayed  at  the  barrack,  sir,"  I  said  in  panic. 

There  was  a  faint  giggle  from  the  class  and  Molony  raised  his  brows  in 
mild  surprise.  He  was  a  big  powerful  man  with  fair  hair  and  blue  eyes 
and  a  manner  that  at  times  was  deceptively  mild. 

"Oh,  indeed?"  he  said  politely  enough.  "And  what  did  you  do  that  for?" 

"I  was  watching  the  soldiers  drilling,  sir,"  said  I. 

The  class  giggled  again.  This  was  a  new  line  entirely  for  them.  I  sup- 
pose it  was  the  first  time  anyone  ever  told  the  truth  in  that  class.  Besides, 
Molony  had  a  dead  set  on  the  English. 

"Oh,"  said  Molony  casually,  "I  never  knew  you  were  such  a  military 
man.  Hold  out  your  hand!" 

Compared  with  the  laughter  the  slaps  were  nothing  and  I  did  not  flinch. 
I  returned  to  my  desk  slowly  and  quietly  without  snivelling  or  squeezing 
my  hands,  and  the  Murderer  looked  after  me,  raising  his  brows  again  as 
much  as  to  say  that  this  was  a  new  line  for  him  too.  But  the  other  fellows 
gaped  and  whispered  as  if  I  were  some  strange  animal.  At  playtime  they 
all  gathered  round  me,  full  of  excitement. 

"Regan,  why  did  you  say  that  about  the  barrack?" 

"Because  'twas  true,"  I  replied  firmly.  "I  wasn't  going  to  tell  him  a  lie." 

"What  lie?" 

"That  I  was  at  Mass." 

"Then  couldn't  you  say  you  had  to  go  on  a  message?" 

"That  would  be  a  lie  too." 

"Cripes,  Regan,"  they  said,  "you'd  better  mind  yourself.  The  Murderer 
is  in  an  awful  wax.  He'll  massacre  you." 

I  knew  that  only  too  well.  I  could  see  that  the  man's  professional  pride 
had  been  deeply  hurt,  and  for  the  rest  of  the  day  I  was  on  my  best  be- 
haviour. But  my  best  was  not  sufficient  for  the  occasion,  for  I  underrated 
the  Murderer's  guile.  From  the  frown  on  his  face  he  seemed  to  be  puz- 
zled over  something  in  a  book  he  was  reading,  and  even  when  he  spoke,  in 
a  low  quiet  voice,  he  scarcely  raised  his  blue  eyes  from  it. 

"Regan,  was  that  you  talking?" 

"  Twas,  sir,"  I  replied  in  consternation. 

This  time  the  whole  class  laughed.  They  couldn't  believe  that  I  wasn't 
deliberately  trailing  my  coat,  and,  of  course,  the  laugh  must  have  con- 
vinced him  that  I  was.  I  suppose  if  people  do  tell  you  lies  all  day  and  every 
day  it  soon  becomes  a  sort  of  perquisite  and  you  resent  being  deprived  of 
it 


Some  Readers  at  Work  39 

"Oh,"  he  said,  throwing  down  the  book,  "well  soon  put  a  stop  to  that/' 

This  time  it  was  a  tougher  job,  because  he  really  was  on  his  mettle.  But 
so  was  I.  I  knew  this  was  the  testing  point,  and  that  if  only  I  could  keep 
my  head  I  should  provide  a  model  for  the  whole  class.  When  I  had  got 
through  with  it  without  moving  a  muscle  and  returned  to  my  desk  with  my 
hands  by  my  side,  the  invisible  presences  gave  me  a  great  clap,  but  the 
visible  ones  were  nearly  as  annoyed  as  the  Murderer.  After  school  a  half- 
dozen  of  them  followed  me  down  the  playground  through  the  smell  of 
stale  bread  and  butter. 

"Go  on!"  they  shouted  truculently.  "Shaping  as  usuall" 

"I  was  not  shaping." 

"You  were  shaping!  You're  always  showing  off.  Trying  to  pretend  he 
didn't  hurt  you  —  a  blooming  cry-baby  like  you!" 

"I  wasn't  trying  to  pretend,"  I  shouted,  even  then  resisting  the  tempta- 
tion to  nurse  my  bruised  hands.  "Only  decent  fellows  don't  cry  over  every 
little  pain  like  kids." 

"Go  on!"  they  bawled  after  me.  "You  ould  idiot."  And  as  I  went  down 
the  school  lane,  still  trying  to  keep  what  the  stories  called  "a  stiff  upper 
lip"  and  reminding  myself  that  my  torture  was  over  until  the  next  morn- 
ing, I  heard  their  mocking  voices  after  me. 

"Mad  Bill!   Yah,  Mad  Bill!" 

I  realized  that  if  I  were  to  keep  on  terms  with  the  invisible  presences  I 
should  have  to  watch  my  step  in  school. 

So  I  did,  all  through  that  year.  But  then,  one  day,  an  awful  thing  hap- 
pened. I  was  coming  in  from  the  yard,  and  in  the  porch  outside  our  school- 
room I  saw  a  fellow  called  Gorman  taking  something  from  a  coat  on  the 
rack.  Gorman  was  a  fellow  I  disliked  and  feared;  a  handsome,  sulky, 
spoiled,  and  sneering  lout.  I  paid  no  attention  to  him  because  I  had  es- 
caped for  a  few  moments  into  my  dream  world  in  which  fathers  never 
gave  you  anything  less  than  fivers  and  chaps  who  had  been  ignored  sud- 
ddnly  turned  up  and  saved  the  honour  of  the  school  in  the  last  half  of  the 
match. 

"Who  are  you  looking  at?"  he  asked  threateningly. 

"I  wasn't  looking  at  anyone,"  I  said  with  an  indignant  start. 

"I  was  only  getting  a  pencil  out  of  my  coat,"  he  added,  clenching  his 
fists. 

"Nobody  said  you  weren't,"  said  I,  thinking  this  a  very  queer  thing  to 
start  a  row  about. 

"You'd  better  not  either,"  he  snarled.  "You  can  mind  your  own  business." 

"You  mind  yours,"  I  retorted,  for  the  purpose  of  saving  face.  "I  never 
spoke  to  you  at  all." 

And  that,  so  far  as  I  was  concerned,  was  the  end  of  it.  But  after  play- 
time, the  Murderer,  looking  exceptionally  serious,  stood  before  the  class, 
balancing  a  pencil  in  both  hands. 

"Everyone  who  left  the  classroom  this  morning,  stand  out!"  he  said.  Then 


40  Reader 

he  lowered  his  head  and  looked  at  us  from  under  his  fair  brows.  "Mind, 
now,  I  said  everyonel" 

I  stood  out  with  the  others,  including  Gorman. 

"Did  you  take  anything  from  a  coat  on  the  rack  this  morning?"  asked 
the  Murderer,  laying  a  heavy,  hairy  paw  on  Gorman's  shoulder  and  staring 
into  his  face. 

"Me,  sir?"  Gorman  asked  innocently.   "No,  sir." 

"Did  you  see  anyone  doing  it?" 

"No,  sir." 

"You?"  he  asked  another  lad,  but  even  before  he  reached  me  at  all  I 
realized  why  Gorman  had  told  the  lie  and  wondered  in  panic  what  I  should 
do. 

"You?"  he  asked  me,  and  his  big  red  face  was  close  to  mine  and  his  blue 
eyes  only  a  couple  of  inches  away. 

"I  didn't  take  anything,  sir,"  I  said  in  a  low  voice. 

"Did  you  see  someone  else  do  it?"  he  asked,  raising  his  brows  and  in- 
dicating quite  plainly  that  he  had  noticed  my  evasion.  "Have  you  a  tongue 
in  your  head?"  he  shouted  suddenly,  and  the  whole  class,  electrified,  stared 
at  me.  "You?"  he  added  curtly  to  the  next  boy  as  though  he  had  given  me 
up. 

"No,  sir." 

"Back  to  your  desks,  the  rest  of  yel"  he  ordered.  "Regan,  you  stay  here!" 

He  waited  until  everyone  was  seated  again  before  he  went  on. 

"Turn  out  your  pockets!" 

I  did,  and  a  half-stifled  giggle  rose  which  the  Murderer  quelled  with  a 
thunderous  glance.  Even  for  a  small  boy,  I  had  pockets  that  were  museums 
in  themselves;  the  purpose  of  half  the  things  I  brought  to  light  I  couldn't 
have  explained  myself.  They  were  antiques,  prehistoric,  and  unlabelled. 
Among  them  was  a  school  story  borrowed  the  previous  evening  from  an- 
other chap,  a  queer  fellow  who  chewed  paper  as  if  it  were  gum.  The 
Murderer  reached  out  for  it,  and,  holding  it  at  arm's  length,  shook  it  out 
with  an  expression  of  deepening  disgust  as  he  saw  the  nibbled  corners  and 
margins. 

"Oh,"  he  said  disdainfully,  "so  this  is  how  you  waste  your  time,  is  it? 
What  do  you  do  with  these  —  eat  them?" 

"  'Tisn't  mine,  sir,"  I  said  against  the  laugh  that  sprang  up.  "I  borrowed 
it." 

"Is  that  what  you  did  with  the  money?"  he  added  quickly,  his  fat  head 
on  one  side. 

"Money?"  I  said,  getting  confused.   "What  money?" 

"The  shilling  that  was  stolen  from  Flanagan's  overcoat  this  morning,"  he 
added  —  Flanagan  was  a  little  hunchback  whose  people  coddled  him:  no 
one  else  in  the  school  would  have  had  that  much  money. 

"I  never  took  Flanagan's  shilling,"  I  said,  beginning  to  cry.  "And  you 
have  no  right  to  say  I  did." 

"I  have  the  right  to  say  that  you're  the  most  impudent,  defiant  puppy  in 


Some  Readers  at  Work  41 

the  class,"  he  replied,  his  voice  hoarse  with  rage,  "and  I  wouldn't  put  it 
past  you.  What  else  can  anyone  expect  and  you  reading  this  dirty,  rotten, 
filthy  rubbish?"  And  he  tore  my  school  story  in  two  halves  and  tossed  them 
to  the  farthest  corner  of  the  schoolroom.  "Dirty,  filthy  English  rubbish! 
Now  hold  out  your  hand!" 

This  time  the  invisible  presences  deserted  me.  Hearing  themselves  de- 
scribed in  those  contemptuous  terms,  they  fled.  The  Murderer  went  mad 
in  the  way  people  do  whenever  they're  up  against  something  they  don't 
understand.  Even  the  other  fellows  were  shocked,  and  heaven  knows  they 
had  little  enough  sympathy  with  me. 

"You  should  put  the  police  on  him,"  they  advised  me  afterwards  in  the 
playground.  "He  lifted  the  cane  over  his  shoulder.  He  could  get  the  gaol 
for  that." 

"But  why  didn't  you  say  you  didn't  see  anyone?"  asked  one  chap. 

"Because  I  did,"  I  said,  beginning  to  sob  all  over  again  at  the  memory 
of  my  wrongs.  "I  saw  Gorman." 

"Gorman?"  they  echoed  incredulously.  "Was  it  Gorman  took  Flanagan's 
money?  And  why  didn't  you  say  so?" 

"Because  it  wouldn't  be  right,"  I  sobbed. 

"Why  wouldn't  it  be  right?"  one  of  them  asked,  gaping. 

"Because  Gorman  should  have  told  the  truth  himself,"  I  said.  "And  if 
this  was  a  decent  school  no  one  would  ever  speak  to  him  again  for  it." 

"But  why  would  Gorman  tell  the  truth  if  he  took  the  money?"  he  asked, 
as  you'd  speak  to  a  baby.  "Jay,  Regan,"  he  added  pityingly,  "you're  get- 
ting madder  and  madder.  Now  look  what  you're  after  bringing  on  your- 
self!" 

Suddenly  Gorman  himself  came  lumbering  up. 

"Regan,"  he  shouted  threateningly,  "did  you  say  I  stole  Flanagan's 
money?" 

Gorman,  though,  of  course,  I  didn't  realize  it,  was  as  much  at  sea  as 
Molony  and  the  rest  of  them.  The  only  way  he  could  explain  my  silence 
was  by  assuming  that  I  was  afraid  of  his  threats,  and  now  he  felt  the  time 
had  come  to  renew  them.  He  couldn't  have  come  at  a  moment  when  I 
cared  less  for  them.  Despairingly  I  lashed  out  with  all  my  strength  at  his 
brutal  face.  He  screamed,  and  his  hand  came  away  from  his  mouth,  all 
blood.  Then  he  threw  off  his  satchel  and  made  for  me,  but  at  the  same 
moment  a  door  opened  behind  us  and  a  lame  teacher  called  Murphy 
emerged.  We  all  ran  like  mad  and  the  fight  was  forgotten. 

But  it  wasn't  forgotten,  in  other  quarters.  Next  morning  after  prayers 
the  Murderer  scowled  at  me. 

"Regan,"  he  asked,  "were  you  fighting  in  the  yard  after  school  yester- 
day?" 

For  a  second  or  so  I  didn't  reply.  I  couldn't  help  feeling  that  the  game 
wasn't  worth  a  candle.  But  before  the  spiritual  presences  fled  for  ever  I 
made  one  last  effort. 

"I  was,  sir,"  I  said,  and  this  time  there  wasn't  even  a  titter.  The  whole 


42  Reader 

class  took  it  solemnly  as  the  behavior  of  a  chap  who  was  quite  out  of  his 
mind. 

"Who  were  you  fighting  with?" 

"I'd  rather  not  say,  sir,"  I  replied,  hysteria  beginning  to  well  up  in  me. 
It  was  all  very  well  for  the  invisible  presences,  but  they  hadn't  to  deal  with 
the  Murderer. 

"Who  was  he  fighting  with?"  he  asked  lightly,  resting  his  hands  on  the 
desk  and  studying  the  ceiling. 

"Gorman,  sir,"  replied  three  or  four  voices  —  as  easy  as  thatl 

"Did  Gorman  hit  him  first?" 

"No,  sir.   He  hit  Gorman  first." 

"Stand  out,"  he  said,  taking  up  the  cane  again.  "Now,"  he  added,  going 
up  to  Gorman,  "you  take  this  and  hit  him.  And  make  sure  you  hit  him 
hard,"  he  added,  giving  Gorman's  arm  an  encouraging  squeeze.  "Regan 
thinks  he's  a  great  fellow.  You  show  him  now  what  we  think  of  him." 

Gorman  came  towards  me  with  the  cane  in  one  hand  and  a  broad  grin  on 
his  face.  The  whole  class  began  to  roar  as  if  it  were  a  great  joke  and  even 
the  Murderer  permitted  himself  a  modest  grin  at  his  own  cleverness. 

"Hold  out  your  hand,"  he  said  to  me. 

I  didn't.   I  began  to  feel  trapped  and  a  little  crazy. 

"Hold  out  your  hand,  I  sayl"  he  shouted,  beginning  to  lose  his  temper 
again. 

"I  will  not,"  I  shouted  back  at  him,  losing  all  control  of  myself. 

"You  what?"  he  cried,  dashing  at  me  round  the  classroom  with  his  hand 
raised  above  his  head  as  though  to  strike  me.  "What's  that  you  said,  you 
dirty  little  thief?" 

"I'm  not  a  thief,"  I  screamed.  "And  if  he  comes  near  me  I'll  kick  the 
shins  off  him.  You  have  no  right  to  give  him  that  cane.  And  you  have  no 
right  to  call  me  a  thief  either.  If  you  do  it  again,  I'll  go  down  to  the  police 
and  then  we'll  soon  see  who  the  thief  is." 

"You  refused  to  answer  my  questions,"  he  shouted,  and  if  I  had  been  in 
my  right  mind  I  should  have  known  that  he  was  suddenly  frightened  of 
something. 

"No,"  I  said  through  my  sobs,  "and  I  won't  answer  them  now  either.  I'm 
not  a  spy." 

"Oh,"  he  retorted  with  a  sarcastic  sniff,  "so  that's  what  you  call  a  spy?" 

"Yes,  and  that's  what  they  all  are,  all  the  fellows  here  —  dirty  spiesl  — 
but  I'm  not  going  to  be  a  spy  for  you.  You  can  do  your  own  spying." 

"That's  enough  now,  that's  enough!"  he  said,  raising  his  fat  hand  almost 
beseechingly.  "There's  no  need  to  lose  control  of  yourself,  my  dear  young 
fellow,  and  there's  no  need  whatever  to  screech  like  that.  'Tis  most  un- 
manly. Go  back  to  your  seat  now  and  I'll  talk  to  you  another  time." 

That  day  I  did  no  work  at  all,  and  no  one  else  did  much  either.  The 
hysteria  had  spread  to  the  class.  I  alternated  between  fits  of  exultation  at 
the  thought  of  how  I  had  defied  the  Murderer  to  his  face  and  panic  at  the 


Some  Readers  at  Work  43 

prospect  of  how  he'd  take  it  out  of  me  after,  and  at  each  change  of  mood 
I  put  my  head  in  my  hands  and  sobbed  all  over  again.  The  Murderer 
didn't  tell  me  to  stop.  He  didn't  even  look  at  me.  The  poor  unfortunate 
man!  When  I  think  of  it  now  I  almost  feel  sorry  for  him. 

After  that  I  was  the  hero  of  the  school  for  a  whole  afternoon.  Even 
Gorman,  when  he  tried  to  resume  the  fight,  was  told  by  two  or  three  of  the 
bigger  fellows  to  hop  off;  a  fellow  that  took  the  cane  to  beat  another  chap, 
he  had  no  status  at  all.  But  that  was  not  the  sort  of  hero  I  wanted  to  be.  I 
wanted  something  calmer,  more  codified,  less  sensational. 

Next  morning  I  was  in  such  a  state  of  panic  that  I  didn't  know  how  to 
face  school  at  all.  The  silence  of  the  school  lane  and  the  yard  put  me  into  a 
fresh  panic.  I  was  late  again! 

"What  kept  you,  Regan?"  the  Murderer  asked  quietly. 

"I  was  at  Mass,  sir,"  said  I. 

"Oh,  all  right,"  he  said,  though  he  seemed  a  bit  surprised.  What  I  hadn't 
realized  was  the  immense  advantage  of  our  system  over  the  English  one. 
By  this  time  half  a  dozen  of  his  pets  had  brought  the  Murderer  the  true 
story,  and  if  he  didn't  feel  himself  a  monster,  he  certainly  felt  himself  a 
fool,  which  is  worse. 

But  by  that  time  I  didn't  care.  In  my  school-sack  I  had  another  story. 
Not  a  school  story  this  time,  though.  School  stories  were  a  wash-out. 
"Bang!  Bang!"  —  that  was  the  only  way  to  deal  with  fellows  like  the 
Murderer  and  Gorman.  "The  only  good  teacher  is  a  dead  teacher." 


On  First  Looking  Into  Chapman's  Homer 

"John  Keats  •  i795~i82i 

MUCH  have  I  travelled  in  the  realms  of  gold, 

And  many  goodly  states  and  kingdoms  seen; 

Round  many  western  islands  have  I  been 
Which  bards  in  fealty  to  Apollo  hold. 
Oft  of  one  wide  expanse  had  I  been  told, 

That  deep-browed  Homer  ruled  as  his  demesne: 

Yet  did  I  never  breathe  its  pure  serene 
Till  I  heard  Chapman  speak  out  loud  and  bold: 
Then  felt  I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 

When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken; 
Or  like  stout  Cortez  when  with  eagle  eyes 

He  stared  at  the  Pacific  —  and  all  his  men 
Looked  at  each  other  with  a  wild  surmise  — 

Silent,  upon  a  peak  in  Darien. 


Readers  and 
College  Life 


"Forget  your  Uncle  Edgar. 
Read  Carlylel" 


What  Every  Freshman  Should 

Know    «*  Jer  1M.  Holmes  •  1905- 


You  will  probably  be  surprised  to  find  a  professor  —  Mr.  Holmes  is 
professor  of  philosophy  at  Mt.  Holyoke  College  —  who  will  give  you 
advice  that  comes  so  close  to  your  own  suppressed  good-sense,  and 
astounded  to  find  a  textbook  that  will  pass  it  on  to  you.  But  professors 
and  textbooks  are  sometimes  more  sensible  than  you  think. 

I  NEVER  FACE  a  class  without  wondering  what  would  happen  if  students 
were  not  so  docile.  Why  do  you  meet  your  professors  and  the  academic 
taradiddle  of  college  with  such  fear  and  respect?  You  are  everywhere  in 
chains  because  you  accept  a  tradition  about  college  work  which  at  cost  to 
you  misrepresents  its  values  and  overestimates  its  importance.  You  re- 
mind me  of  the  elephant  chained  to  his  stake  at  the  circus.  If  the  poor 
devil  knew  his  own  strength!  And  if  you  and  your  classmates  but  knew 
yoursl  The  good  things  that  might  happen  to  our  colleges  if  you  would 
take  matters  into  your  own  hands  and  pull  up  a  few  of  the  rotted  stakes  of 
academic  tradition  are  worth  dreaming  about  Consider  some  confidential 
advice  from  one  who  would  like  to  see  you  gain  your  freedom,  who  knows 

Reprinted  by  permission  of  the  author  and  the  publisher  from  The  American  Mercury, 
November,  1940. 

44 


Readers  and  College  Ufe  45 

the  weaknesses  of  academic  life  from  the  inside,  and  can  give  a  few  point- 
ers on  how  to  pull  at  those  stakes. 

One  of  the  first  things  you  are  told  is  that  you  must  study  hard.  But  that 
is  only  half  of  the  story.  The  other  half  is  that  beyond  a  certain  point 
which  is  easily  reached,  the  more  you  work  the  poorer  the  results.  In  my 
particular  college  you  would  be  supposed  to  devote  not  more  than  fifteen 
hours  a  week  to  classes  and  another  thirty  to  outside  assignments.  That 
means  that  you  should  be  able  to  escape  academic  duties  for  one  whole  day 
each  week  and  to  take  either  the  afternoon  or  the  evening  off  almost  every 
day.  Work  hard  when  you  work.  Mornings  are  the  best  times.  But  never 
work  through  both  afternoon  and  evening.  And  take  off  part  of  Saturday 
and  most  of  Sunday.  Use  three  afternoons  for  exercise  in  the  open  air  and 
three  evenings  for  movies  or  concerts  or  plays  or  for  that  novel  you  want 
to  read.  Your  college  work  will  benefit. 

You  will  be  told  that  classes  are  the  most  important  thing  at  college. 
Don't  believe  it.  President  Eliot  of  Harvard  said  that  if  he  wished  to 
found  a  college  the  first  thing  he  would  build  would  be  a  dormitory.  If 
there  were  money  left  over,  he  would  erect  a  library  and  fill  it  with  books. 
And  if  he  had  money  to  burn  he  would  hire  a  faculty  and  build  a  classroom 
building.  Those  of  us  who  are  willing  to  remember  find  it  easy  to  recollect 
that  the  most  valuable  things  that  happened  to  us  in  college  usually  hap- 
pened in  our  dormitories,  and  most  of  them  after  midnight.  We  also  re- 
call with  considerable  pleasure  the  few  occasions  when  we  had  the  time 
and  audacity  to  enter  the  college  library  and  just  browse  among  books 
utterly  unconnected  with  our  courses.  Somehow  we  remember  those  books. 
We  read  them  not  because  we  had  to,  but  because  we  wanted  to.  The 
difference  is  tremendous. 

You  will  be  told  that  marks  are  important.  But  they  are  a  meager  indica- 
tion of  a  student's  worth.  Someday  we  shall  have  the  courage  to  scuttle  the 
whole  marking  system,  and  with  it,  I  hope,  will  go  that  awful  and  mean- 
ingless sheepskin.  Marks  provide  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  the  whole 
academic  tradition.  I  wish  every  college  student  might  come  behind  the 
scenes  and  watch  his  instructors  doling  out  grades  on  papers  and  blue- 
books.  We  have  such  curious  foibles.  The  odds  are  definitely  in  favor  of  a 
paper  read  after  rather  than  before  dinner.  A  typewritten  paper  stands  a 
better  chance  than  one  in  longhand.  And  that  factor  of  lengthl  I  know  one 
student  who  got  himself  an  A  by  sandwiching  a  dozen  pages  of  economics 
notes  into  a  long  term-paper  on  Beethoven.  It  is  a  matter  of  record  that 
given  the  same  set  of  papers  twice  we  will  grade  them  differently.  Given 
the  same  paper,  moreover,  various  teachers  will  assign  it  grades  rang- 
ing from  D  to  A,  even  in  mathematics.  Some  departments  give  as  many  as 
40  per  cent  of  their  students  A's,  while  others  in  the  same  institution  allow 
only  5  per  cent  of  the  same  students  to  get  the  highest  marks. 

You  have  probably  been  told  that  your  academic  record  as  an  under- 
graduate will  make  or  break  your  life.  That  simply  is  not  so.  Are  you 


46  Reader 

going  into  teaching?  There  is  not  a  college  president  worth  his  salt  who 
does  not  know  that  a  Phi  Beta  Kappa  key  is  small  indication  of  your 
promise  as  a  teacher.  Are  you  going  to  professional  school?  Countless  men 
and  women  with  average  grades  as  undergraduates  have  done  brilliantly  in 
professional  school.  And  in  getting  jobs,  it  is  what  they  have  been  able  to 
do  in  professional  school  that  counts.  Are  you  going  to  seek  work  as  soon 
as  you  finish  college?  Letters  of  recommendation  these  days  cover  numerous 
items  which  have  nothing  to  do  with  your  academic  achievement  but  are 
just  as  important.  It  would  not  be  true  to  say  that  marks  mean  nothing, 
but  if  you  will  remember  these  facts  every  time  you  enter  a  classroom  you 
will  be  on  the  right  track. 

Your  professors  form  part  of  the  academic  taradiddle  too.  We  stand  on 
little  raised  platforms,  the  academic  equivalents  of  the  pedestal;  we  call 
ourselves  "doctors"  and  smile  with  patient  condescension  when  mistaken 
for  medical  men;  we  put  high-sounding  letters  after  our  names;  and  we 
march  in  academic  processions,  clothed  in  magnificent  medieval  costumes. 
All  in  all  we  manage  by  such  devices  to  convey  the  impression  that  we 
know  what  we  are  talking  about.  To  be  sure,  we  are  not  as  pompous  as 
some  of  our  European  colleagues  in  crime.  Some  of  us  even  have  the 
courage  to  sit  on  the  same  level  and  at  the  same  seminar  table  with  our 
students  and  listen  to  what  they  have  to  say.  But  it  is  not  difficult  to  get 
the  impression  that  your  professors  are  founts  of  wisdom. 

You  will  be  told  to  take  careful  notes  on  their  lectures  and  to  commit 
those  notes  to  memory.  This  whole  business  of  note-taking  is  outmoded. 
Students  started  taking  notes  in  the  Middle  Ages,  before  the  printing  press 
was  invented.  The  student  wrote  his  own  books.  Today,  with  large  col- 
lege libraries  and  with  textbooks  crowding  and  jostling  one  another  for 
attention,  the  taking  of  notes  is  anachronistic.  What  you  will  do,  if  you 
are  like  the  rest  of  the  sheep,  will  be  to  produce  pages  and  pages  of  notes, 
study  them  religiously  for  the  examinations,  then  store  them  away.  If  you 
ever  look  at  them  again  it  will  be  simply  to  realize  that  the  information  they 
convey  is  far  better  presented  in  at  least  a  dozen  books  immediately  avail- 
able, or  that  it  is  so  thoroughly  out  of  date  that  the  notes  are  useless. 

One  of  the  major  instruments  of  torture  in  collegiate  education  is  the 
course  examination.  By  this  device  the  professor  is  enabled  to  discover 
how  much  of  what  he  has  said  in  class  you  have  committed  to  memory. 
The  night  before  the  examination  you  cram  the  notes  into  your  head.  Next 
morning  you  enter  a  room  heavy  with  the  atmosphere  of  suspicion.  You 
leave  all  notes  and  books  in  the  hall,  and  you  write  on  questions  the  an- 
swers to  which  you  will  have  forgotten  within  a  week,  answers  which  in 
ordinary  life  no  one  in  his  right  mind  would  ask  you  to  remember  because 
the  information  is  available  in  the  reference  books  where  it  belongs.  Either 
you  are  working  under  the  honor  system,  an  unwitting  accessory  to  the 
hocus-pocus,  or  you  are  annoyed  and  upset  by  a  proctor  who  marches 


Readers  and  College  Life  47 

around  among  the  desks  looking  for  trouble.  The  more  you  understand 
why  you  are  in  college,  the  less  seriously  you  will  take  examinations.  Some 
day  you  may  even  educate  us  to  the  point  where  we  will  compose  tests 
which  will  measure  your  ability  to  use  your  knowledge  with  originality, 
rather  than  your  ability  to  ape  teacher.  When  that  day  arrives  we  shall  let 
you  bring  notes,  texts  and  even  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  to  examina- 
tions. And  then  you  may  take  examinations  seriously. 

Now  that  you  are  in  college  and  going  to  classes,  pause  long  enough  to 
ask  yourself  why  we  are  teaching  and  you  are  learning.  In  spite  of  what 
you  may  have  heard  from  us  or  your  high  school  teachers  or  your  parents, 
the  answer  is  not  that  we  know  the  final  answers  to  the  problems  we  are 
discussing.  We  are  teaching  because  we  have  studied  carefully  subjects  in 
which  you  are  a  beginner,  and  because  we  have  had  more  worldly  experi- 
ence than  you.  But  neither  of  these  facts  makes  us  omniscient.  If  the  truth 
be  known,  there  are  those  of  you  in  our  classes  who  are  more  intelligent 
than  we  are  —  who  will  outstrip  us  in  our  chosen  fields.  Question  us. 
Doubt  us.  Raise  objections.  Make  us  thinkl  Avoid  us  when  we  measure 
your  achievement  in  terms  of  the  proximity  of  your  thinking  to  our  own. 
Welcome  us  when  we  admit  that  we  do  not  know  the  answers  to  your 
questions,  when  we  help  you  to  find  your  own  answers,  when  we  en- 
courage you  to  consider  views  with  which  we  do  not  agree. 

Why  are  you  going  to  college?  Not  to  enhance  your  parents'  social  posi- 
tion; not  to  get  high  marks;  not  to  get  the  ultimate  answers,  which  not 
even  we  can  furnish.  To  use  our  own  professional  jargon,  you  come  to 
college  to  get  a  liberal  education.  We  must  admit  that  we  do  not  altogether 
know  what  a  liberal  education  is,  but  we  have  some  fairly  good  ideas  on 
the  subject.  We  do  not  entirely  follow  these  ideas.  None  of  us,  for  ex- 
ample, believes  that  there  is  a  magic  in  piling  up  a  certain  number  of  hour- 
credits.  Yet,  sixty  credits  and  you  get  your  diploma.  And  that  diploma  is 
supposed  to  admit  you  to  the  company  of  educated  men  and  women.  Why 
not  fifty-five,  or  sixty-five?  We  do  not  know.  Indeed  if  you  pressed  us  we 
should  have  to  admit  that  some  students  are  liberally  educated  with  thirty 
credits  while  others  will  not  belong  to  the  educated  company  if  they  take 
sixty  times  sixty  hours  of  credit.  Do  not  measure  your  education  by  sim- 
ple arithmetic. 

Elect  your  courses  with  care.  If  you  go  to  a  college  which  requires  that 
you  juggle  five  courses  at  once,  you  will  do  well  to  find  one  easy  berth  and 
sleep  in  it;  otherwise  you  cannot  do  justice  to  the  other  four.  This  is  a 
secret  practice  acceptable  and  accepted  by  all.  But  in  general  easy  courses 
should  be  avoided  simply  because  they  are  easy  and  do  not  give  you  your 
father's  money's  worth. 

Do  not  select  your  courses  with  an  eye  to  a  specific  job  or  type  of  oc- 
cupation. More  of  you  will  make  this  mistake  than  not,  and  it  is  one  of  the 
most  serious  you  can  make.  In  the  first  place,  we  know  at  least  that  a 


48  Reader 

liberal  education  involves  a  balance  and  harmony  of  interests.  Secondly, 
your  interests  and  talents  are  by  no  means  fully  appreciated  or  explored 
when  you  come  to  us.  You  do  not  want  to  wake  up  in  your  senior  year 
and  wish  that  you  had  not  missed  many  important  and  interesting  things. 
Thousands  of  seniors  do. 

When  you  come  to  college  you  are  intellectually  very  young  and  have 
not  yet  learned  to  proceed  safely  or  efficiently  under  your  own  intellectual 
power.  You  are  what  your  environment  and  your  elders  have  made  you. 
Your  ideas  are  not  your  own.  The  first  thing  you  must  learn  is  to  stand 
on  your  own  ideas.  This  is  why  you  should  not  take  us  and  our  ideas  too 
seriously.  Broaden  your  horizon  so  that  as  you  become  more  and  more  able 
to  take  care  of  yourself  you  will  move  intelligently.  Do  considerable  men- 
tal visiting  in  your  first  years  in  college.  Try  to  encounter  the  major  points 
of  view  represented  on  the  faculty  and  among  the  students.  Entertain  them 
the  more  seriously  the  more  they  differ  from  your  own.  You  may  return  to 
your  own,  but  if  you  do  it  will  be  with  greater  tolerance  and  broader 
understanding. 

You  come  to  college  to  gain  a  liberal  perspective.  In  gaining  this  per- 
spective you  must  come  to  know  the  nature  which  surrounds  and  compels 
you,  the  society  with  which  you  must  live  and  cooperate,  the  creative  spirit 
which  is  your  heritage,  and  the  tools  of  language  and  of  thought.  To  ex- 
press it  in  this  specific  manner  is  helpful.  It  suggests  certain  intellectual 
virtues  which  you  must  possess  before  you  can  be  considered  an  educated 
man  or  woman.  This  does  not  mean  that  there  are  particular  courses  which 
can  alone  provide  you  with  these  virtues.  Do  not  take  a  course  solely  for 
its  specific  content. 

For  example,  we  have  said  that  you  must  come  to  know  the  natural 
world.  This  does  not  mean  that  you  must  study  physics  and  chemistry  and 
astronomy  and  geology.  It  means  that  you  must  acquire  the  scientific  at- 
titude, understand  the  atmosphere  and  significance  of  the  exact  sciences, 
know  their  fundamental  assumptions,  their  key  concepts,  their  major  con- 
tributions. And  the  same  is  true  of  the  biological  sciences.  A  course  in 
botany  or  zoology  or  physiology  or  psychology  is  enough  to  give  you  an 
understanding  of  the  important  aspects  of  biology.  You  have  not  time  for 
them  all.  But  one  is  essential.  Far  too  many  are  ignorant  of  the  biological 
forces  affecting  human  conduct.  You  should  get  into  the  laboratory  while 
you  are  in  college,  and  you  should  work  in  both  the  exact  and  the  biological 
sciences. 

You  want  also  to  know  the  society  with  which  you  must  live  and  co- 
operate. And  one  of  the  ways  in  which  you  want  to  know  it  is  the  histori- 
cal. You  must  be  historically  minded.  You  must  recognize  the  importance 
of  the  past  for  the  present.  Man  learns  by  experience,  and  history  is  social 
experience.  Greek,  Roman,  European,  American  history  —  you  cannot 
study  them  all,  but  you  can  become  historically  minded.  And  you  can  be- 
come socially  minded  in  your  view  of  the  present  world.  Economic,  social 


Readers  and  College  Life  49 

and  political  forces  have  your  world  in  their  grips.  You  must  study  these 
forces,  measure  them,  evaluate  them. 

Our  heritage  in  the  field  of  the  arts  has  always  been  recognized  as 
liberalizing.  Not  so  much  need  to  urge  you  here.  Most  of  the  greatest  in- 
terpretation of  human  living  is  to  be  found  in  painting,  sculpture,  music 
and  literature.  What  are  some  of  the  things  which  the  great  creative 
geniuses  have  told  us  about  ourselves?  What  are  modern  artists  trying  to 
do?  You  must  find  out  these  things,  not  just  that  you  may  go  to  museums 
and  concerts,  but  that  you  may  want  to  go  to  museums  and  concerts.  Elect 
some  art  or  music,  for  pleasure,  but  also  to  increase  your  knowledge.  Also, 
get  a  full  and  enthusiastic  knowledge  of  the  literature  of  your  mother 
tongue.  You  will  have  discovered  a  source  of  wisdom,  good  taste  and 
pleasure.  Such  studies  need  no  recommendation. 

Finally,  you  must  come  to  understand  the  tools  of  language  and  of 
thought.  And  here  urging  is  necessary.  You  ought  to  know  another  lan- 
guage, ancient  or  modern,  inflected  or  non-inflected,  so  well  that  you  dream 
in  it.  Such  knowledge  gives  a  far  better  understanding  of  your  own  tongue, 
both  as  a  tool  and  as  an  art,  than  you  could  otherwise  obtain.  And  you 
will  have  open  to  you  another  literature.  Furthermore,  you  should  be  con- 
versant with  the  structures  and  powers  of  thought  as  an  intellectual  tool, 
and  you  should  be  willing  to  examine  fundamental  assumptions.  Mathe- 
matics, logic  and  philosophy  are  helpful  here.  You  may  think  them  difficult, 
but  do  not  avoid  them  altogether. 

If  you  will  examine  this  program  for  the  enlarging  of  your  intellectual 
horizon  you  will  see  that  it  involves  some  eight  subjects  spread  throughout 
the  departments  of  your  college.  It  is  a  program  which  you  can  complete 
in  your  freshman  and  sophomore  years  and  one  which  you  should  carry 
through  in  order  that  you  may  be  equipped  intellectually  to  proceed  to 
the  second  part  of  your  college  education.  It  will  give  you  necessary 
breadth. 

But  you  must  also  specialize,  when  the  foundation  has  been  laid.  You 
must  do  this  not  because  specialization  will  prepare  you  for  a  specific  job, 
but  because  a  certain  degree  of  specialization  is  the  second  essential  of  true 
intellectual  endeavor.  Without  specialization  your  college  work  is  in  dan- 
ger of  becoming  that  thin  veneer  of  "culture"  which  we  all  recognize  as 
superficial.  And  now  you  will  find  the  faculty  more  cooperative.  We  are 
specialists  and  we  like  to  encourage  specialization.  But  still  be  on  your 
guard,  for  we  shall  mislead  you  by  overemphasizing  the  importance  of  our 
particular  little  corners  of  learning.  The  important  matter  is  not  what  you 
specialize  in,  but  that  you  specialize.  Specialization  for  its  own  sake,  that  is 
my  point.  If  you  are  going  on  to  graduate  work  you  will  find  the  over- 
whelming advice  of  graduate  school  faculties  to  be  that  you  specialize  in 
anything  but  your  subject  of  graduate  study.  If  you  are  going  into  medi- 
cine, you  might  major  in  history.  If  you  will  be  a  lawyer,  major  in  art  or 
music. 


50  Reader 

Even  your  specialization  should  be  carefully  planned.  In  the  first  place, 
it  will  probably  be  advisable  for  you  to  do  advanced  work  in  each  of  the 
four  major  fields  of  study:  natural  science;  social  science;  art  and  litera- 
ture; and  language,  mathematics  or  philosophy.  If  you  studied  chemistry 
as  a  freshman,  you  might  go  on  to  more  advanced  chemistry  and  take 
elementary  astronomy  or  geology  as  allied  work.  In  short,  in  each  major 
field  in  which  you  took  two  elementary  courses  as  an  underclassman,  you 
should  follow  one  elementary  course  into  advanced  work  and  at  the  same 
time  gain  some  knowledge  in  an  allied  field. 

But  this  will  take  only  half  of  your  time  as  an  upperclassman.  You 
should  devote  the  other  half  of  your  last  two  years  to  intensive  specializa- 
tion in  one  subject  in  which  you  have  the  greatest  interest  and  for  which 
you  have  shown  marked  talent.  Perhaps  you  have  found  history  the  most 
absorbing  of  subjects.  Goodl  Go  on  in  it.  Devote  half  of  your  junior  and 
senior  years  to  history.  Show  that  you  can  work  intensively  on  the  details  of 
your  chosen  major,  manipulate  these  details  correctly,  and  fit  them  into  a 
comprehensive  picture  of  the  whole.  But  remember  —  though  your  teach- 
ers will  work  against  you  here  —  remember  that  you  are  studying  primarily 
for  the  sake  of  the  intensive  specialization  and  not  of  the  history.  Your 
roommate  is  getting  the  same  thing  from  majoring  in  mathematics  or  Eng- 
lish literature. 

When  you  have  avoided  the  Scylla  of  heterogeneous  meanderings  among 
elementary  facts  and  concepts  and  the  Charybdis  of  a  study  so  narrow  that 
you  are  ignorant  of  what  is  going  on  outside  your  own  little  corner  of  in- 
terest, you  will  have  intellectual  balance  and  perspective.  Do  not  take  us 
as  your  models.  We  represent  a  special  world  and  we  are  an  academic 
people.  You  are  going  into  a  broader  world  and  a  non-academic  environ- 
ment. Make  us  realize  that  our  interests  and  understandings  should  spread 
into  every  field.  Make  us  see  that  our  students  are  at  least  as  important  as 
the  subjects  we  teach.  Make  us  understand  that  marks  and  examinations  are 
mere  administrative  conveniences  to  be  taken  far  less  seriously  than  we 
take  them.  In  short,  insist  that  we  get  together  as  a  unified  organization  and 
provide  you  with  a  liberal  education.  Strength  to  youl  If  you  will  do 
these  things  you  will  be  performing  a  service  to  us  and  to  yourselves. 


What  College  Did  to  Me 

Robert  'Bencbley  •  4889-4P45 


Your  college  education  —  will  it  be  a  well-planned  program  of  the 
sort  Roger  Holmes  recommends,  or  will  it  turn  out  to  be  what  Benchley 
declares  his  was  not,  but  shows  it  really  was,  a  "haphazard  affair"? 
Benchley  treats  the  subject  humorously  and  makes  us  laugh,  but  like 
most  good  humorists,  he  makes  us  think  too.  For  he  is  doing  more 
than  making  fun:  he  is  making  fun  of  something.  Of  what,  mostly?  Of 
himself  and  what  he  got  out  of  college?  Or  of  college,  for  what  it  did 
to  him,  and  does  to  most  of  us?  Or  both? 

MY  COLLEGE  EDUCATION  was  no  haphazard  affair.  My  courses  were  all  se- 
lected with  a  very  definite  aim  in  view,  with  a  serious  purpose  in  mind  — 
no  classes  before  eleven  in  the  morning  or  after  two-thirty  in  the  afternoon, 
and  nothing  on  Saturday  at  all.  That  was  my  slogan.  On  that  rock  was  my 
education  built. 

As  what  is  known  as  the  Classical  Course  involved  practically  no  after- 
noon laboratory  work,  whereas  in  the  Scientific  Course  a  man's  time  was 
never  his  own  until  four  p.m.  anyway,  I  went  in  for  the  classics.  But  only 
such  classics  as  allowed  for  a  good  sleep  in  the  morning.  A  man  has  his 
health  to  think  of.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  being  a  studying  fool. 

In  my  days  (I  was  a  classmate  of  the  founder  of  the  college)  a  student 
could  elect  to  take  any  courses  in  the  catalogue,  provided  no  two  of  his 
choices  came  at  the  same  hour.  The  only  things  he  was  not  supposed  to  mix 
were  Scotch  and  gin.  This  was  known  as  the  Elective  System.  Now  I  under- 
stand' that  the  boys  have  to  have,  during  the  four  years,  at  least  three 
courses  beginning  with  the  same  letter.  This  probably  makes  it  very  awk- 
ward for  those  who  like  to  get  away  of  a  Friday  afternoon  for  the  week- 
end. 

Under  the  Elective  System  my  schedule  was  somewhat  as  follows: 

Mondays,  Wednesdays  and  Fridays  at  11:00: 
Botany  2a  (The  History  of  Flowers  and  Their  Meaning) 

Tuesdays  and  Thursdays  at  11:00: 

English  26  (The  Social  Life  of  the  Minor  Sixteenth  Century  Poets) 

Mondays,  Wednesdays  and  Fridays  at  12:00: 

Music  9  (History  and  Appreciation  of  the  Clavichord) 

"What  College  Did  to  Me"  is  reprinted  by  permission  from  The  Early  Worm  by 
Robert  Benchley.  Copyright,  1927,  by  Harper  and  Brother!. 

51 


52  Reader 

Tuesdays  and  Thursdays  at  12:00: 

German  12b  (Early  Minnesingers  —  Walter  von  Vogelweider,  Ulric 

Glannsdorf  and  Freimann  von  Stremhofen.  Their  Songs  and  Times) 
Mondays,  Wednesdays  and  Fridays  at  1:30: 

Fine  Arts  6  (Doric  Columns:  Their  Uses,  History  and  Various  Heights) 
Tuesdays  and  Thursdays  at  1:30: 

French  Ic  (Exceptions  to  the  verb  6tre) 

This  was,  of  course,  just  one  year's  work.  The  next  year  I  followed  these 
courses  up  with  supplementary  courses  in  the  history  of  lace-making,  Rus- 
sian taxation  systems  before  Catharine  the  Great,  North  American  glacial 
deposits  and  Early  Renaissance  etchers. 

This  gave  me  a  general  idea  of  the  progress  of  civilization  and  a  certain 
practical  knowledge  which  has  stood  me  in  good  stead  in  thousands  of 
ways  since  my  graduation. 

My  system  of  studying  was  no  less  strict.  In  lecture  courses  I  had  my 
notebooks  so  arranged  that  one-half  of  the  page  could  be  devoted  to  draw- 
ings of  five-pointed  stars  (exquisitely  shaded),  girls'  heads,  and  tick-tack- 
toe.  Some  of  the  drawings  in  my  economics  notebook  in  the  course  on 
Early  English  Trade  Winds  were  the  finest  things  I  have  ever  done.  One  of 
them  was  a  whole  tree  ( an  oak )  with  every  leaf  in  perfect  detail.  Several 
instructors  commented  on  my  work  in  this  field. 

These  notes  I  would  take  home  after  the  lecture,  together  with  whatever 
supplementary  reading  the  course  called  for.  Notes  and  textbooks  would 
then  be  placed  on  a  table  under  a  strong  lamplight.  Next  came  the  sharp- 
ening of  pencils,  which  would  take  perhaps  fifteen  minutes.  I  had  some  of 
the  best  sharpened  pencils  in  college.  These  I  placed  on  the  table  beside 
the  notes  and  books. 

At  this  point  it  was  necessary  to  light  a  pipe,  which  involved  going  to  the 
table  where  the  tobacco  was.  As  it  so  happened,  on  the  same  table  was  a 
poker  hand,  all  dealt,  lying  in  front  of  a  vacant  chair.  Four  other  chairs 
were  oddly  enough  occupied  by  students,  also  preparing  to  study.  It  there- 
fore resolved  itself  into  something  of  a  seminar,  or  group  conference,  on  the 
courses  under  discussion.  For  example,  the  first  student  would  say: 

"I  can't  open." 

The  second  student  would  perhaps  say  the  same  thing. 

The  third  student  would  say:  Til  open  for  fifty  cents." 

And  the  seminar  would  be  on. 

At  the  end  of  the  seminar,  I  would  go  back  to  my  desk,  pile  the  notes 
and  books  on  top  of  each  other,  put  the  light  out,  and  go  to  bed,  tired  but 
happy  in  the  realization  that  I  had  not  only  spent  the  evening  busily  but 
had  helped  put  four  of  my  friends  through  college. 

An  inventory  of  stock  acquired  at  college  discloses  the  following  bits  of 
culture  and  erudition  which  have  nestled  in  my  mind  after  all  these  years. 


Readers  and  College  Life  53 

THINGS  I  LEARNED  FRESHMAN  YEAR 

1.  Charlemagne  either  died  or  was  born  or  did  something  with  the  Holy 
Roman  Empire  in  800. 

2.  By  placing  one  paper  bag  inside  another  paper  bag  you  can  carry 
home  a  milk  shake  in  it. 

3.  There  is  a  double  1  in  the  middle  of  "parallel." 

4.  Powder  rubbed  on  the  chin  will  take  the  place  of  a  shave  if  the  room 
isn't  very  light. 

5.  French  nouns  ending  in  "aison"  are  feminine. 

6.  Almost  everything  you  need  to  know  about  a  subject  is  in  the  ency- 
clopedia. 

7.  A  tasty  sandwich  can  be  made  by  spreading  peanut  butter  on  raisin 
bread. 

8.  A  floating  body  displaces  its  own  weight  in  the  liquid  in  which  it 
floats. 

9.  A  sock  with  a  hole  in  the  toe  can  be  worn  inside  out  with  comparative 
comfort. 

10.  The  chances  are  against  filling  an  inside  straight. 

11.  There  is  a  law  in  economics  called  The  Law  of  Diminishing  Returns, 
which  means  that  after  a  certain  margin  is  reached  returns  begin  to  dimin- 
ish. This  may  not  be  correctly  stated,  but  there  is  a  law  by  that  name. 

12.  You  begin  tuning  a  mandolin  with  A  and  tune  the  other  strings  from 
that. 

SOPHOMORE  YEAR 

1.  A  good  imitation  of  measles  rash  can  be  effected  by  stabbing  the  fore- 
arm with  a  stiff  whisk-broom. 

2.  Queen  Elizabeth  was  not  above  suspicion. 

3.  In  Spanish  you  pronounce  z  like  th. 

4.  Nine-tenths  of  the  girls  in  a  girls'  college  are  not  pretty. 

5.  You  can  sleep  undetected  in  a  lecture  course  by  resting  the  head 
on  the  hand  as  if  shading  the  eyes. 

6.  Weakness  in  drawing  technique  can  be  hidden  by  using  a  wash  instead 
of  black  and  white  line. 

7.  Quite  a  respectable  bun  can  be  acquired  by  smoking  three  or  four 
pipefuls  of  strong  tobacco  when  you  have  no  food  in  your  stomach. 

8.  The  ancient  Phoenicians  were  really  Jews,  and  got  as  far  north  as 
England  where  they  operated  tin  mines. 

9.  You  can  get  dressed  much  quicker  in  the  morning  if  the  night  before 
when  you  are  going  to  bed  you  take  off  your  trousers  and  underdrawers  at 
once,  leaving  the  latter  inside  the  former. 

JUNIOR  YEAR 

1.  Emerson  left  his  pastorate  because  he  had  some  argument  about 
communion. 


54  Reader 

2.  All  women  are  untrustworthy. 

3.  Pushing  your  arms  back  as  far  as  they  will  go  fifty  times  each  day 
increases  your  chest  measurement. 

4.  Marcus  Aurelius  had  a  son  who  turned  out  to  be  a  bad  boy. 

5.  Eight  hours  of  sleep  are  not  necessary. 

6.  Heraclitus  believed  that  fire  was  the  basis  of  all  life. 

7.  A  good  way  to  keep  your  trousers  pressed  is  to  hang  them  from  the 
bureau  drawer. 

8.  The  chances  are  that  you  will  never  fill  an  inside  straight. 

9.  The  Republicans  believe  in  a  centralized  government,  the  Democrats 
in  a  de-centralized  one. 

10.  It  is  not  necessarily  effeminate  to  drink  tea. 

SENIOR  YEAR 

1.  A  dinner  coat  looks  better  than  full  dress. 

2.  There  is  as  yet  no  law  determining  what  constitutes  trespass  in  an 
airplane. 

3.  Six  hours  of  sleep  are  not  necessary. 

4.  Bicarbonate  of  soda  taken  before  retiring  makes  you  feel  better  the 
next  day. 

5.  You  needn't  be  fully  dressed  if  you  wear  a  cap  and  gown  to  a  nine- 
o'clock  recitation. 

6.  Theater  tickets  may  be  charged. 

7.  Flowers  may  be  charged. 

8.  May  is  the  shortest  month  in  the  year. 

The  foregoing  outline  of  my  education  is  true  enough  in  its  way,  and  is 
what  people  like  to  think  about  a  college  course.  It  has  become  quite  the 
cynical  thing  to  admit  laughingly  that  college  did  one  no  good.  It  is  part  of 
the  American  Credo  that  all  that  the  college  student  learns  is  to  catch  punts 
and  dance.  I  had  to  write  something  like  that  to  satisfy  the  editors.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  I  learned  a  great  deal  in  college  and  have  those  four  years  to 
thank  for  whatever  I  know  today. 

( The  above  note  was  written  to  satisfy  those  of  my  instructors  and  finan- 
cial backers  who  may  read  this.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  original  outline  is 
true,  and  I  had  to  look  up  the  date  about  Charlemagne  at  that. ) 


Heartache  on  the  Campus  «* 

"Mrs.  Qknn  frank  •  ipoo- 


First  a  dormitory,  then  a  library,  then  a  faculty  and  classrooms:  in 
his  essay  above,  Roger  Holmes  quotes  President  Eliot  of  Harvard  as 
listing  the  essentials  of  a  college  in  this  order.  The  order  recognizes 
that  much  of  what  is  valuable  in  a  college  education  comes  not  from 
books  or  professors  but  from  the  social  experiences  of  college  life.  For 
many  students,  fraternities  and  sororities  play  the  most  valued  part  in 
organizing  social  life.  But  for  others  do  they  play  a  cruel  and  crippling 
part?  Notice  that  President  Eliot  listed  a  dormitory,  not  a  fraternity 
house.  In  this  essay  Mrs.  Glenn  Frank  (who  states  her  qualifications), 
eloquently  argues  the  case  against  the  fraternity-sorority  system,  on  the 
grounds  of  the  essentially  undemocratic  and  inhumane  social  attitudes 
she  believes  it  inculcates  ih'fhose  who"Be7ong,  as  well  as  on  the  grounds 
of  the  suffering  it  inflicts  upon  those  who  do  not.  If  you  believe  in  the 
system,  what  answers  can  you  find  to  her  argument,  on  both  grounds, 
not  merely  on  the  grounds  of  its  benefits  to  those  who  belong? 

A  FEW  WEEKS  ago  at  a  large  middle-western  university  I  talked  with  a  stu- 
dent who  had  recently  been  discharged  from  the  army  for  poor  health.  The 
boy  said  he  liked  the  school,  his  courses  and  his  professors.  There  was  one 
thing,however,  which  he  did  not  like.  He  had  come  to  the  university  as  a 
(Jegacy^to  one  of  the  leading  fraternities,  but  after  looking  him  over  the 
fraternity  brothers  had  not  invited  him  to  become  a  member. 

"I  guess  the  war  had  made  me  too  old,"  he  said,  grinning,  but  for  all  his 
nonchalance  I  could  see  the  hurt  in  his  eyes.  He  had  been  cruelly  snubbed. 
Right  at  the  start  of  his  college  career  he  had  discovered  that  the  very 
democracy  for  which  he  had  fought  didn't  exist  at  this  great  university. 

His  discovery  is  not  unique.  Reports  of  friction  between  returning  vet- 
erans and  the  Greek-letter  societies  come  from  many  other  colleges  and 
universities  supported  by  taxpayers'  money.  Young  men  who  have  been 
matured  in  the  hard  school  of  war  are  finding  themselves  the  victims  of  a 
ridiculous  and  iuvenilp  oggfp.  sysferp  which  is  totally  un-American.  This 
should  not  be.  It  is  time  for  the  legislatures  of  this  country  to  enact  stringenf 
laws  abolishing  both  college  and  high  school  fraternities  and  sororities  from 
coast  to  coast. 

To  some  people  that  may  sound  like  a  strong  remedy  for  a  comparatively 
minor  evil  in  our  educational  system.  But  I  do  not  consider  it  minor. 

From  the  Woman's  Home  Companion,  April,  1945.  Reprinted  by  the  kind  permission 
of  the  author. 

55 


56-  Reader 

I » 

For  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century,  as  a  sorority  woman  myself  and  as 
the  wife  of  the  president  of  one  of  our  largest  state  universities,  I  have  had 
a  close  view  of  the  operations  of  the  Greek-letter  societies.  What  I  have 
jigen  has  convinced  me  that  any  good  _which  these  societies  accomplish  is 
far  Qutwqigfrftfi  ^jTtplmhflppi^^and  hej^regk.wto 
thousands  of  young  people  every  year,  and  by  the  class-consciousness, 
religious  bigotry  ^and  race  prejudice  which  they  foment  right  in  those  insti- 
tutions which  should  be  the  most  liberal.  They  have  no  more  place  in  our 
public  educational  system  than  a  Hitler  youth  movement. 

Yes,  you  may  say,  but  if  fraternities  and  sororities  should  be  abolished, 
^wouldn't  students  organize  other  cliques  and  clubs?  I  admit  that  they 
would,  but  such  groups  would  be  formed  in  a  normal  natural  way.  Students 
would  be  judged  on  their  merits  and  find  their  own  level.  A  boy  or  girl 
would  not  be  relegated  to  a  fixed  position  in  campus  society  during  the  tirst 
days  of  school,  as  is  provided  under  smug  Panhellenic  rules,  merely  because 
of  the  prestige  or  bank  account  of  his  parents,  or  because  of  the  way  he 
flipped  a  cigarette  or  handled  a  cup  of  tea. 

Only  the  other  day  I  heard  of  the  case  of  a  dull  and  unattractive  youth 
who  was  taken  into  an  exclusive  fraternity  merely  because  his  father,  a  rich 
alumnus,  had  presented  the  chapter  house  with  a  pine-paneled  library;  and 
I  know  of  another  case,  just  as  recent,  where  a  brilliant  and  beautiful  girl 
was  kept  out  of  a  sorority  because  her  father  happened  to  be  a  railroad 
engineer. 

"What  a  pity  God  couldn't  have  made  him  a  doctor  or  a  lawyer  instead," 
one  of  the  sorority  members  said,  but,  imbued  with  the  snobbery  of  her 
group,  she  voted  against  the  girl  just  the  same. 

Such  discrimination  is  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception  and  just  as  often 
students  are  casually  black-balled  because  of  some  trivial  or  imagined  flaw 
in  their  appearance,  dress  or  manners.  Over  and  over  again  I  have  known 
of  a  boy's  being  rejected  by  a  fraternity  because  he  failed  to  dance  well  or 
wear  the  latest  cut  of  collar,  or  of  a  girl  who  was  made  to  feel  a  campus 
outcast  because  she  was  a  bit  overweigiit,  perhaps,  or  made  the  tatal  mistake 
of  cutting  her  lettuce  with  a  knife. 

The  high  school  fraternities  and  sororities  are,  if  anything,  even  more 
brutal  than  the  college  societies  which  they  imitate  because  they  are  un- 
supervised  and  they  victimize  students  of  an  even  more  impressionable 
age.  Many  needless  tears  are  shed  and  many  hearts  are  broken  every  year 
where  they  flourish.  I  even  know  of  one  adolescent  girl  who  committed 
suicide  because  her  high  school  sorority  refused  to  admit  her  sister  to  mem- 
bership. 

I  realize  that  in  certain  places  where  high  school  fraternities  and  sororities 
have  been  suppressed  by  law  they  have  sprung  up  again  in  the  form  of 
sub  rosa  organizations,  but  this  can  be  prevented  by  requiring  students  to 
sign  pledges  against  joining  secret  societies  as  is  now  done  in  the  Milwaukee 
schools.  Our  main  objective,  however,  should  be  the  college  fraternities 


Readers  and  College  Life  57 

and  sororities.  Once  they  are  eradicated,  their  high  school  offshoots  will 
wither  and  die  qjuiagv^  — — -— - - — »- 

The  appalling  injustice  and  cruelty  of  the  method  by  which  students  are 
rushed  and  pledged  to  fraternities  and  sororities  was  first  brought  home  to 
me  through  personal  experience. 

The  men  of  my  father's  family  had  for  generations  attended  distinguished 
colleges  and  some  of  them  had  made  distinguished  records.  My  father  felt 
that  it  was  high  time  that  the  girls  of  the  family  should  receive  real  educa- 
tions too,  and  since  there  wasn't  enough  money  to  send  me  to  Vassar,  he 
decided  to  send  me  to  the  university  of  my  home  state,  Missouri. 

Before  I  left  home,  two  of  my  mother's  best  friends  said  that  since  they 
had  been  Pi  Phi's  at  Missouri  they  hoped  I  might  become  one  too,  and  that 
they  intended  to  write  to  the  chapter  recommending  me.  This  conversation 
made  me  a  bit  apprehensive,  but  Mother  brushed  it  aside.  After  all,  I  was 
going  to  the  university  to  get  an  education,  she  said,  not  to  become  a  Pi  Phi. 
What  difference  did  it  make  whether  the  sorority  asked  me  or  not? 

But  during  my  first  hours  at  the  university  I  was  made  to  feel  that  sorori- 
ties were  the  only  thing  that  did  matter.  Although  they  represented  only  a 
minority  of  the  women  students,  they  had  apparently  taken  over  the  campus. 
They  were  giving  teas,  luncheons  and  dinners.  They  were  helping  some 
freshmen  to  matriculate  and  escorting  others  around  town  in  stylish  car- 
riages, but  only  those  freshmen,  of  course,  about  whom  they  had  received 
letters.  The  YWCA  was  arranging  parties  for  all  girls,  but  no  one  wanted 
to  go  to  them. 

The  big  event  of  the  Pi  Phi  rushing  program  was  an  evening  party  at  the 
chapter  house  where  candidates  for  pledging  were  given  a  final  once-ovei 
by  the  members.  I  shall  never  forget  that  party.  While  stunning  girls,  gor- 
geously gowned,  looked  us  over  critically,  I  felt  the  way  a  person  must  feel 
on  his  way  to  the  gallows.  My  pink-dotted  mull  dress  and  hair  tied  with  a 
ribbon  were  all  wrong,  I  felt,  and  I  knew  that  one  false  move,  such  as  spill- 
ing my  coffee,  would  bar  me  forever  from  Pi  Phi.  I  was  frightened  and 
homesick  and  my  throat  was  parched. 

When  I  got  back  to  my  room  that  night,  I  wrote  to  Mother  begging  her 
to  let  me  come  home.  I  pleaded  homesickness,  not  daring  to  tell  her  that  I 
was  a  failure  —  that  there  was  no  use  in  staying  on,  no  use  getting  an  edu- 
cation or  anything  else,  because  the  Pi  Phi's  hadn't  asked  me  and  apparently 
weren't  going  to  ask  me.  Never  before  or  since  have  I  felt  so  rejected,  so 
hopelessly  unattractive. 

I  started  packing,  but  one  afternoon  there  was  a  call  from  the  Pi  Phi 
house.  Would  I  come  over?  I  was  so  excited  that  I  thought  my  quaking 
knees  would  not  carry  me  several  blocks.  When  I  got  there,  one  of  the 
members  pinned  the  Pi  Phi's  colors  on  my  jumper  dress.  I  was  in! 

It  is  impossible  for  me  to  put  into  words  the  relief  which  I  experienced  at 
that  moment.  It  was  like  a  reprieve  from  death.  If  I  live  to  be  a  hundred, 


58  Reader 

I  shall  never  forget,  either,  the  deep  sense  of  inferiority  which  I  felt  during 
the  period  when  I  thought  I  was  not  going  to  be  pledged.  Life  for  me 
simply  wasn't  worth  living. 

All  this  happened  a  long  time  ago,  but  the  heartless  and  undemocratic 
methods  used  in  rushing  and  selecting  pledges  have  not  been  changed  one 
iota.  In  1925,  when  my  husband  started  his  long  term  of  office  as  president 
of  the  University  of  Wisconsin,  I  thought  I  might  find  conditions  there  dif- 
ferent, because  Wisconsin  had  a  reputation  for  liberality.  But  I  discovered 
the  system  there  was  just  as  brutal  as  at  Missouri,  and  it  still  is. 

Every  autumn  at  Wisconsin,  as  at  many  colleges,  there  would  come  a 
Sunday  which  always  seemed  to  me  the  saddest  day  of  the  year.  It  was  the 
Sunday  on  which  the  sororities  sent  out  their  invitations.  It  might  be  a 
beautiful  fall  day,  but  in  boarding  houses  all  over  Madison,  I  knew,  hun- 
dreds of  teen-age  girls  would  be  waiting  tensely  for  bids  which  would  never 
come.  As  dusk  fell  all  hope  would  die  in  their  hearts  and  many,  many  of 
those  youngsters  would  cry  themselves  to  sleep  that  night. 

I  know,  moreover,  that  the  injury  which  is  inflicted  upon  a  young  student's 
pride  and  self-respect  when  he  is  turned  down  by  a  Greek-letter  society  is, 
all  too  often,  a  permanent  injury 

Not  long  ago  I  had  a  chat  with  a  woman  who  failed  to  make  a  sorority 
during  her  stay  at  Wisconsin  and  who  now  lives  in  a  fashionable  suburb  of 
Chicago.  She  has  a  successful  husband,  a  lovely  home  and  devoted  children, 
but  she  confessed  to  me  that  if  a  guest  in  her  house  mentions  colleges  she 
gets  up  and  leaves  the  room  for  fear  she  may  be  asked  what  sorority  she 
belongs  to. 

Yes,  and  there  is  the  case  of  Zona  Gale.  A  short  time  before  her  death 
she  told  me  how,  more  than  thirty  years  before  when  she  was  a  student  at 
Wisconsin,  she  had  wistfully  watched  the  Delta  Gammas  starting  off  on 
picnics  and  had  wished  they  would  ask  her  to  go  with  them. 

Think  of  it  —  Zona  Galel  Wisconsin's  most  famous  daughter!  Possessed 
of  beauty,  character,  genius.  Winner  of  the  Pulitzer  prize  and  holder  of  the 
highest  honorary  degrees  which  the  university  could  confer.  Yet  the  old 
cut  of  being  ignored  by  the  sororities  had  never  healed.  It  was  not  vanity. 
Zona  Gale  had  the  least  vanity  of  any  woman  I  have  ever  known.  It  was 
just  plain  hurt  —  hurt  inflicted  by  a  system  which  doesn't  make  sense. 

The  scars  which  fraternities  and  sororities  deal  out  gratuitously  to  the 
thousands  of  students  whom  they  turn  down  every  year  are  reason  enough 
alone,  it  seems  to  me,  to  condemn  them  to  extinction,  but  they  are  guilty 
of  other  gross  crimes  against  democracy. 

kecently  a  pretty  s^irority^inTfoiaine  that  she  had  been  invited  to  a  glee 
club  concert  by  a  brilliant  nonfraternity  man  whom  she  really  liked.  Did 
she  accept  him?  No  indeed.  Her  sorority  sisters  might  have  made  remarks. 
Instead,  she  went  to  the  concert  with  a  nitwit  whom  she  didn't  like.  He 


Readers  and  College  Life  59 

didn't  have  an  idea  in  his  head,  but  he  belonged  to  a  good  fraternity  and 
her  choice  was  highly  approved. 

Once  in  a  sorority  or  fraternity,  a  student  is  compelled  to  conform  to  a 
caste  system  whether  he  approves  it  or  not.  If  he  doesn't  join  one,  on  the 
other  hand,  he  is  apt  to  find  himself  excluded  from  leadership  in  many 
college  activities.  Greek-letter  students  are  a  minority  on  most  campuses 
but  are  so  tightly  knit  and  politically  organized  that  they  generally  control 
elections. 

At  Wisconsin,  for  example,  which  is  typical  of  most  state  universities,  the 
highest  social  honor  obtainable  is  that  of  being  chosen  king  or  queen  of  the 
junior  prom,  but  only  once  since  1925  has  a  nonfraternity  man  been  elected 
prom  king,  and  there  has  been  only  one  prom  queen  who  was  not  in  a 
sorority. 

Some  defenders  of  the  fraternity  and  sorority  system  contend  that  this 
condition  is  proof  positive  that  nonfraternity  and  nonsorority  students  lack 
inherent  aggressiveness  and  leadership.  That  is  utter  bosh. 

The  most  brilliant  boy  in  my  class  at  Missouri,  a  man  who  is  now  known 
throughout  America,  was  rejected  by  the  fraternities  because  he  was  con- 
sidered countrified,  and  just  a  few  months  ago  middle-western  newspapers 
carried  long  obituaries  about  another  nonfraternity  man  whom  I  knew  years 
later.  He  wasn't  considered  good  enough  to  enter  a  fraternity  because  his 
mother  was  guilty  of  the  heinous  crime  of  working  for  a  living.  He  was 
good  enough,  though,  to  become  a  well-known  lawyer  in  his  state  within  a 
few  years  after  leaving  college,  and  to  give  his  life  for  his  country  while 
serving  with  our  air  forces  in  the  South  Pacific. 

No,  under  the  present  Panhellenic  system,  even  Abraham  Lincoln 
wouldn't  possess  leadership  enough  to  make  a  fraternity,  but  a  brief  study 
of  Who's  Who  in  America  proves  that  fraternities  have  no  monopoly  on 
ability.  Just  as  many  non-Greeks  as  Greeks  make  names  for  themselves 
after  college. 

Even  more  sinister  than  thejrtfaer  forms  of^ snobbery  is  the  religious 
bigotry  and  race  prejudice  wfiich  fraternities  anostfrorities  foster  in  the 

mmas  of  the  y6uiig. 

The  dean  of  women  at  one  of  our  large  universities  told  me  only  the 
other  day  that  Catholic  girls  were  admitted  to  sororities  there  under  a  quota 
system  which  permitted  only  a  limited  number  of  Catholics  to  be  pledged 
each  year.  This  quota  does  not  in  any  way  compare  with  the  percentage  of 
Catholic  girls  at  the  university.  The  same  system  prevails,  I  know,  whether 
it  is  admitted  or  not,  at  many  other  colleges  and  universities. 

As  for  Jewish  students,  they  are  excluded  generally  by  leading  fraternities 
and  sororities.  A  few  weeks  ago  I  heard  a  group  of  liberal-minded  youths 
in  one  fraternity  at  an  eastern  college  who  rebelled  against  this  taboo.  By 
threatening  to  resign  all  at  once  the  group  forced  this  chapter  to  pledge  a 
popular  Jewish  student.  That  was  splendid,  but  I  regret  to  say  it  is  the  only 


60  Reader 

case  of  the  kind  I  have  ever  heard  of.  In  most  houses,  anti-Semitism  is 
almost  a  part  of  the  ritual. 

In  self-defense  the  Jews  have  formed  their  own  fraternities  and  sororities, 
but  they  have  been  brutally  snubbed  year  after  year  by  a  stuffy  faction  in 
Panhellenic  which  has  refused  to  grant  them  national  charters. 

Now  why,  in  a  nation  which  is  pouring  out  its  substance  to  provide  equal 
rights  for  all  people,  do  we  permit  a  cruel  caste  system  to  flourish  in  our 
public  schools? 

One  of  the  reasons,  I  think,  is  the  attitude  of  parents. 

I  knew  a  woman  in  Madison  who  devoted  sixteen  years  of  her  life,  from 
the  time  her  daughter  was  born  until  the  child  was  of  college  age,  to  making 
social  contacts  which  would  enable  her  to  get  her  daughter  into  an  exclusive 
sorority,  and  that  kind  of  thing  is  not  uncommon.  At  a  cocktail  party  re- 
cently, I  talked  with  a  number  of  mothers  of  teen-age  children.  Almost 
without  exception  they  were  much  more  concerned  about  getting  their  sons 
and  daughters  into  fraternities  and  sororities  than  getting  them  an  educa- 
tion. 

Those  women  were  not  hopeless  snobs.  Most  of  them  agreed  that  fra- 
ternities and  sororities  are  unkind  and  undemocratic.  Others  deplored  the 
added  expense  to  which  they  are  put  —  a  sorority  girl  has  to  be  equipped 
with  a  wardrobe  comparable  to  that  of  a  society  debutante  —  but,  well, 
since  these  organizations  existed,  they  naturally  wanted  their  children  to 
belong  to  the  best  ones. 

This  same  viewpoint  is  too  often  found  among  college  faculty  members. 
Not  long  ago  I  received  a  letter  from  a  professor,  famed  for  his  liberal  views, 
in  which  he  asked  me  to  help  him  get  his  daughter  into  a  certain  sorority. 
Since  the  fraternity  and  sorority  system  is  deeply  entrenched,  he  and  many 
other  professors  who  personally  don't  approve  of  it  seem  to  feel  that  we 
must  have  it  with  us  always,  like  death  and  taxes. 

Such  an  attitude,  it  seems  to  me,  is  lazy  and  un-American.  This  country 
of  ours  has  had  many  other  deeply  entrenched  evils  in  ifs  day,  including 
slavery  and  inhuman  child  labor  conditions,  but  we  found  ways  of  getting 
rid  of  them. 

Among  the  most  ardent  exponents  of  the  Greek-letter  societies  are  the 
rofessional  alumni  —  I've  noticed  they  are  often  people  who  have  not  been 
very  successhiTStnnfe  leaving  college  —  who  maintain  that  fmtgoiitLas^and 
sororities  bestow  a  kind  jp£jnagical  pdBsh  upon  the  boys  and  girls  who 

belong  ia  them.  ~     ~ 

That  is  mostly  pure  nonsense.  During  twenty-five  years  around  college, 
I  have  never  observed  that  the  Greek-letter  students  acquired  any  better 
manners  than  the  others,  but  if  they  did  it  would  be  a  petty  gain  indeed 
compared  to  the  dangerous  caste  ideas  they  are  likely  to  absorb  at  the 
same  time. 

The  only  valid  argument  which  the  defenders  of  the  system  can  muster 
is  that  the  abolition  of  fraternities  and  sororities  would  create  a  housing 


Readers  and  College  Life  61 

shortage  at  many  schools*  True,  but  the  problem  isn't  unsolvable.  Why 
shouldn't  state  universities  buy  chapter  houses  outright  and  convert  them 
into  dormitories  run  under  college  management?  The  total  value  of  chapter 
houses  at  both  public  and  private  colleges  is  about  $100,000,000.  A  sizable 
sum,  yes,  but  less  than  we  were  spending  every  day^  .fight  -a»war^f  or 
democracy.  It  would  be  a  cheap  price  to  pay  for  th£democratization)of 

1  ,.  —  •  '      i  --  =  '  ^^••^••^•^••^••••A-^..  ^  -----------           .  ^^^        |||t  ,||J1J_I__  I'    ••"  "•*•"•"•"*' 

education. 

The  time  for  this  democratization  is  now  Because  of  the  war,  the  fra- 
ternities are  in  a  weaker  position  than  they  have  been  in  a  generation. 
Twenty  per  cent  of  all  chapters  are  inactive,  and  most  of  the  others  are 
depleted  in  membership.  More  important,  the  war  veterans  who  are  enter- 
ing our  colleges  are  bringing  with  them  a  more  adult  point  of  view  than 
the  students  of  peace  years.  A  man  who  has  learned  democracy  in  foxholes 
does  not  mold  so  easily  to  the  fraternity  pattern  as  a  teen-age  boy  right  out 
of  high  school. 

Recently  at  one  university  I  talked  with  a  wounded  veteran  whose  view- 
point, I  believe,  is  typical  of  that  of  thousands  of  other  servicemen.  Because 
of  his  unusual  heroism  in  a  bloody  action  in  the  Pacific,  three  different 
fraternities  tried  to  pledge  him  when  he  entered  college  a  few  months  ago, 
but  he  turned  them  all  down. 

When  I  asked  him  why  he  did  so,  he  said  that  he  considered  himself 
grown  up  and  fraternities  childish.  Why  should  he,  after  what  he  had  been 
through,  scrub  a  sidewalk  with  a  toothbrush  during  hell  week  because  some 
upper  classman  ordered  him  to?  Why  should  he  let  a  lot  of  so-called 
brothers  dictate  what  girls  he  might  or  might  not  go  out  with? 

Yet  we  cannot  depend  upon  this  attitude  of  returning  servicemen  alone  to 
end  the  fraternity  and  sorority  evil.  The  Greek-letter  societies  cannot  be 
laughed  out  of  existence  as  they  deserve  to  be.  They  are  too  deeply  rooted. 
Concerted  actionJ^LStudentS^  parents  and  educators  will  be  needed  before 
our  legislatures  can  be  ^xp^^tfi(jj^grjB£t  tows  .. 


Tcannof  Tepeat  loo  Soften  tKat  this  should  be  done  right  away.  On  foreign 
battlefields,  a  whole  generation  of  American  boys  of  college  age  jeopardized 
their  lives,  and  many  of  them  gave  their  lives,  to  safeguard  democracy. 
Here  at  home,  the  most  powerful  agency  for  the  preservation  of  democracy 
is  the  public  school  system  from  primary  grade  through  university.  To  make 
that  system  wholly  worthy  of  what  our  boys  fought  for,  we  must  wipe  out 
fraternities  and  sororities  while  the  time  is  ripe! 


Dating  in  America 

Qeojfrey  Qorer  •  iP05- 


When  we  read  an  anthropologist's  account  of  the  Trobrianders  or 
the  Australian  Bushmen  we  are  amused  by  the  strange  customs  and 
rituals  of  those  queer  people.  When  an  anthropologist  turns  his  gaze  on 
our  own  customs  and  rituals  we  find  the  shoe  on  the  other  foot  and 
realize  that  we  too  behave  from  deep  unchallenged  ceremonials,  act  on 
unconsidered  but  potent  assumptions.  Here  an  English  anthropologist 
studies  one  of  the  most  interesting  of  campus  (and  off-campus)  rituals. 

THE  pRESENCE^jthe  attention,  the  admiration  of  other  people  .  . .  becomes  for 
Americans  a  necessary  component  to  their  self-esteem,  demanded  with  a 
feeling  of  far  greater  psycHoIogical  urgency  than  is  usual  in  other  countries. 
This  gives  a  special  tone  to  the  social  relationships  of  Americans  with  their 
fellows  (with  the  exception,  on  occasion,  of  marital  and  parental  relation- 
ships ) :  they  are,  in  the  first  instance,  devices  by  which  a  person's  self-esteem 
is  maintained  and  enhanced.  They  can  be  considered  exploitative,  but  this 
exploitation  is  nearly  always  mutual:  "I  will  assure  you  that  you  are  a 
success  if  you  will  assure  me  that  I  am"  might  be  the  unspoken  contract 
under  which  two  people  begin  a  mutual  relationship.  The  most  satisfying 
form  of  this  assurance  is  not  given  by  direct  flattery  or  commendation  ( this 
by  itself  is  suspect  as  a  device  to  exploit  the  other )  but  by  love,  or  at  least 
the  concentrated,  exclusive  attention  which  shows  that  one  is  worthy  of  in- 
terest and  esteem. 

It  is  only  against  this  psychological  background  that  what  is  probably 
the  most  singular  feature  of  American  social  life  can  be  understood:  the 
"dating"  which  occupies  so  much  of  nearly  every  American's  leisure  time 
from  before  adolescence  until  betrothal,  and  which  for  many  continues  even 
after,  if  separation  or  satiety  lessens  the  satisfactions  to  be  derived  from 
the  betrothed,  or  if  excessive  individual  anxiety  demands  more  reassurance 
than  betrothed  or  spouse  or  lover  can  give.  "Dating"  is  idiosyncratic  in 
many  ways,  but  especially  so  in  that  it  uses  the  language  and  gestures  of 
courtship  _and  love-making,  without  necessarily  implying  the  reality  of 
either.  The  overt  differences  of  behavior  which  distinguish  "dating"  from 
C5urtship  are  so  slight  as  to  be  barely  perceptible;  yet  only  in  rare  cases, 
and  those  involving  unbalanced  people,  does  confusion  result  —  when  both 
partners  are  American.  "Dating"  is  a  highly  patterned  activity  or  group  of 
activities,  comparable  in  some  ways  to  a  formal  dance,  in  others  to  a  very 

Reprinted  from  The  American  People  by  Geoffrey  Gorer.  By  permission  of  W.  W. 
Norton  &  Company,  Inc.  Copyright,  1948,  by  Geoffrey  Gorer;  pp.  108-117.  Also  by 
permission  of  The  Cresset  Press,  Limited,  London,  England. 

62 


Readers  and  College  Life  63 

complicated  competitive  game;  it  is  comparable  to  a  dance  in  that  the  ges- 
tures employed  do  not  have  the  significance  they  would  have  in  other  set- 
tings (witness  the  bows  and  curtsies  of  the  minuet,  the  close  embrace  of  the 
waltz  and  later  ballroom  dances ) ;  but  it  is  more  nearly  comparable  to  such 
a  competitive  game  as  chess,  in  which  the  rules  are  known  to,  and  observed 
by,  both  parties,  but  in  which  each  move,  after  the  opening  gambit,  is  a 
response  to  the  previous  move  of  the  other  player.  As  in  dances  and  games, 
the  activity  is  felt  to  be  enjoyable  and  rewarding  for  its  own  sake,  and  the 
more  enjoyable  the  more  nearly  the  partners  or  players  are  matched  in  skill 
and  other  necessary  qualifications.  The  comparison  with  competitive 
games,  such  as  chess,  can  be  carried  further;  both  partners  must  play  with 
concentration  and  seriousness,  using  all  their  ingenuity,  within  the  accepted 
rules,  to  be  the  victor;  apart  from  the  pleasure  of  the  game,  there  is  also 
the  pleasant  enhancement  to  one's  self-esteem  that  winning  the  game  pro- 
vides. There  is  one  aspect,  however,  in  which  the  comparison  of  "dating"  to 
chess  breaks  down;  in  a  succgjsfuJL  elate  ther^-^houl^no^beji  loser;  both 
parjies_shQuld  feel  their  self-esteem,  their  a^urarice,  enhanced. 

As  far  as  I  know,  no  other  society  has  been  recorded  which  has  developed 
a  similar  institutionalized  type  of  behavior  for  its  young  people.  A  number 
of  societies,  of  which  the  Samoans  and  the  Trobrianders  are  well-known 
examples,  allow  for  a  period  of  sexual  license  and  experiment  before  be- 
trothal and  marriage;  but  these  are,  and  are  meant  to  be,  years  of  sensual 
and  sexual  satisfaction,  sought  for  their  own  sake.  In  American  "dating" 
sensual  and  sexual  satisfactions  may  play  a  part  ( though  this  is  by  no  means 
necessary )  as  counters  in  the  game,  but  they  are  not  the  object  of  the  exer- 
cise; the  object  of  the  exercise  is  enhanced  self-esteem,  assurance  that  one 
is  lovable,  and  therefore  a  success.  ~ 

A  further  complication  arises  from  the  fact  that  the  words  and  gestures 
of  love  are  regularly  employed  in  "dating"  without  either  party  taking  them 
for  anything  but  counterfeit,  moves  in  the  game;  and  yet  Americans  believe 
very  deeply  and  passionately  in  love  ( a  concept  not  shared  by  the  Samoans, 
nor  the  Trobrianders,  nor  many  of  the  people  of  whom  we  have  adequate 
studies ) .  It  is  difficult  to  find  comparisons  for  thus  using  frivolously  in  one 
context  words  and  gestures  which  may  be  of  the  greatest  importance  in 
another.  A  very  far-fetched  one  could  be  derived  from  the  game  of  chess. 
In  a  period  of  monarchical  passions  and  court  intrigue  "Your  queen  is  cap- 
tured" or  "Your  king  is  threatened"  could  have  completely  different  signifi- 
cance according  to  the  settings  in  which  the  phrases  were  used. 

There  is,  finally,  the  complication  that  "dating,"  employing  and  being 
known  to  employ  the  words  and  gestures  of  love-making,  is  admitted  and 
abetted  by  parents  and  teachers  who,  many  of  them,  hold  the  puritan  atti- 
tudes toward  sex  and  the  pleasures  of  the  body,  even  though  these  attitudes 
do  not  seem  to  be  held  by  most  of  the  younger  generation. 

Because  "dating"  is  so  idiosyncratic  to  Americans  ( though  the  generality 
of  Americans  do  not  suspect  this,  believing,  like  the  rest  of  the  world,  that 
the  behavior  they  are  used  to  is  "human  nature")  and  because  it  employs 


64  Render 

the  form  —  but  not  the  content  —  of  love-making,  it  has  been  the  cause  of 
innumerable  and  serious  misunderstandings  whenever  young  Americans 
have  come  in  contact  with  foreigners  of  the  opposite  sex.  An  invitation  to 
a  "date"  —  a  pleasant  and  mutually  profitable  evening  to  enhance  each 
other's  self-esteem  and  demonstrate  one's  skill  in  the  game  —  is  almost 
always  interpreted  by  a  non-American  as  an  attempt  at  seduction;  if  it  is 
indignantly  repudiated,  both  parties  are  left  angry  and  dissatisfied:  if  it  is 
immediately  acceded  to,  the  American,  at  least,  feels  defrauded,  as  if  one 
had  set  out  for  a  hunt  and  the  fox  had  insisted  on  sitting  down  in  one's 
back  yard. 

In  a  "date"  the  opening  move,  at  least  overtly,  should  come  from  the 
boy,  in  the  form  of  an  invitation  to  the  girl  to  spend  the  evening  in  his  com- 
pany. The  basis  of  selection  is  somewhat  different  for  the  boy  and  for  the 
girl.  For  the  girl  the  object  is  to  have  as  many  invitations  as  possible,  so 
that  she  can  choose  among  them  the  partner  whom  she  thinks  can  give  her 
the  best  time,  or  who  will  be  the  most  fun  to  compete  with;  for  the  boy  the 
object  is  to  have  as  his  partner  the  girl  who  is  most  admired  and  most 
sought  after  by  his  companions  and  fellow  rivals.  A  girl  who  only  got  a 
single  invitation  to  an  important  social  event  (say  a  commencement  dance), 
even  though  it  was  from  the  most  desirable  boy,  the  captain  of  the  football 
team,  would  be  doubtfully  pleased  (this,  of  course,  on  condition  that  they 
are  not  courting ) ;  a  boy  whose  invitation  is  accepted  by  the  local  "belle"  in 
similar  circumstances  has  already  gained  a  major  social  triumph.  Conse- 
quently, participation  in  the  "dating"  pattern  is  somewhat  different  for  the 
two  sexes:  all  boys  can  and  should  take  part  in  it,  the  level  to  which  they 
aspire  being  dependent  on  their  qualifications;  but  only  the  most  successful 
and  popular  girls  in  each  set  do  so  fully,  the  rest  having  to  be  content  with 
a  steady  boy  friend,  or  even  the  companionship  of  a  fellow  unfortunate. 

Unless  an  American  boy  is  very  poor,  very  maladjusted,  or  for  some  reason 
almost  totally  excluded  from  social  life,  "dating"  and  earning  money  for 
"dates"  will  occupy  the  greater  part  of  his  leisure  time  from  early  adoles- 
cence until  betrothal.  The  social  pressure  toward  doing  so  is  very  great. 
Thus  in  a  typical  Midwestern  college  fraternity  the  senior  members  insisted 
that  the  juniors  have  at  least  three  "dates"  a  week;  and  further  that  these 
"dates"  should  be  with  girls  who  did  honor  to  the  fraternity,  and,  barring 
betrothal,  should  not  be  too  frequently  with  the  same  girl.  Such  open  con- 
trol and  supervision  is  unusual,  but  few  Americans  would  quarrel  with  the 
standard  of  behavior  demanded. 

The  experience  of  girls  is  much  less  uniform,  since  they  are  dependent 
on  the  boys'  invitations,  and  the  boys  will  invite  the  most  popular  girls 
obtainable.  As  a  consequence  some  girls  will  have  almost  all  their  time 
taken  up  by  "dates,"  while  others  have  at  most  an  occasional  one,  and  many 
others  drop  out  of  the  competition  altogether  until  betrothal.  The  picture  is 
clearest  in  formal  dances.  The  hostess  attempts  to  have  at  least  three  men 
for  every  two  girls,  so  that  at  any  moment  at  least  a  third  of  the  men  are  in 


Readers  and  College  Life  65 

the  "stag  line,"  whereas  all  the  girls  are  dancing.  A  man  from  the  stag  line 
"cuts  in  on"  a  dancing  couple  by  tapping  the  man  on  the  shoulder  and  tak- 
ing his  place.  By  etiquette  one  cannot  refuse  to  be  cut  in  on,  nor  can  one 
cut  in  on  one's  immediate  successor;  a  third  man  must  intervene  before  one 
can  resume  one's  partner  and  conversation.  A  man  should  not  abandon  his 
partner  until  cut  in  on;  and  one  of  the  greatest  humiliations  a  girl  can  bear 
is  not  to  be  cut  in  on  before  her  partner  is  satiated  with  her  company.  Such 
an  unfortunate  girl  is  not  likely  to  be  invited  again,  nor,  if  invited,  to  accept. 

For  many  girls,  consequently,  the  "dating"  period  is  one  of  humiliation, 
of  frustration,  of  failure.  fluFBiSugliirrs"^^  usually  psycho- 

logically crlppIingT'Slich  unsuccessful  girls  are  often  betrothed  and  married 
earlier  and  better  than  the  "belles"  who,  many  of  them,  find  it  difficult  to 
give  up  such  prebetrothal  triumphs:  and  moreover  a  "belle"  is  rated  by  the 
amount  of  money  spent  on  her,  among  other  things,  and  the  standard  is  too 
high  for  most  young  men  to  maintain  regularly. 

The  "date"  starts  as  an  invitation  from  a  young  man  to  a  girl  for  an  eve- 
ning's public  entertainment,  typically  at  his  expense,  though  since  the  de- 
pression girls  occasionally  pay  their  share.  The  entertainment  offered  de- 
pends on  the  young  man's  means  and  aspirations,  and  the  locality;  but  it  is 
in  a  public  place  always,  and  nearly  always  includes  eating  food  together, 
the  food  being  anything  from  an  ice-cream  soda  at  the  local  drugstore  to 
the  most  elaborate  and  expensive  meal  that  the  locality  can  provide.  Besides 
the  food,  the  most  usual  entertainment  is  dancing  —  the  place  of  the  dance 
ranging  anywhere  from  the  cheap  roadside  caf6  with  a  jukebox  to  the  most 
expensive  cabaret  or  country  club.  The  male  (the  "escort")  should  call  for 
the  girl  in  a  car  (unless  he  be  particularly  young  or  poor)  and  should  take 
her  back  in  the  car.  If  the  entertainment  proposed  is  of  a  formal  or  expen- 
sive nature,  the  man  should  provide  a  corsage  —  flowers  for  the  girl  to  wear 
on  her  dress  or  in  her  hair. 

The  corsage  is  the  first  sign  of  the  man's  estimate  of  his  partner  for  the 
evening,  partly  through  the  expense  of  the  flowers,  and  partly  according  to 
the  extent  to  which  they  are  particularly  suited  to  the  girl's  appearance, 
personality,  or  costume.  Every  item  of  the  subsequent  entertainment  gives 
further  signs;  the  relative  amount  of  money  spent  is  important  for  the  girl's 
self-esteem,  and  not  in  itself. 

"Showing  the  girl  a  good  time"  is  the  essential  background  for  a  "date," 
but  it  is  not  its  object,  as  far  as  the  man  is  concerned^  its  object  is  to  get  the 
girl^to  prove  that  he  is  worthy  ofJov^^^niA^i^^^^r-^u^ee^.  In  some 
cases  supenoF^fficIelacy  Tn  dancing  will  elicit  the  necessary  signs  of  ap- 
proval; but  typically,  and  not  unexpectedly,  they  are  elicited  by  talk?)  Once 
again,  the  importance  of  words  is  paramount.  ^~  "" 

nSmceTon  first  "dates"  the  pair  are  normally  comparative  strangers  to  one 
another,  a  certain  amount  of  autobiography  is  necessary  in  the  hopes  of 
establishing  some  common  interest  or  experience,  at  the  least  to  prove  that 
one  is  worthy  of  the  other's  attention.  These  autobiographies,  however, 


66  Reader 

differ  at  most  in  emphasis,  in  tone  of  voice,  from  those  which  should  accom- 
pany any  American  meeting  between  strangers.  What  distinguishes  the 
"date"  from  other  conversation  is  a  mixture  of  persiflage,  flattery,  wit  and 
love-making  which  was  formerly  called  a  "line"  but  which  each  generation 
dubs  with  a  new  name. 

The  "line"  is  an  individual  variation  of  a  commonly  accepted  pattern 
which  is  considered  to  be  representative  of  a  facet  of  a  man's  personality. 
Most  men  are  articulately  self-conscious  about  their  "lines"  and  can  describe 
them  with  ease;  they  are  constantly  practiced  and  improved  with  ever 
differing  partners.  The  object  of  the  "line"  is  to  entertain,  amuse,  and  cap- 
tivate the  girl,  but  there  is  no  deep  emotional  involvement;  it  is  a  game  of 
skill. 

The  girl's  skill  consists  of  parrying  the  "line"  without  discouraging  her 
partner  or  becoming  emotionally  involved  herself.  To  the  extent  that  she 
falls  for  the  'line"  she  is  a  loser  in  this  intricate  game;  but  if  she  discourages 
her  partner  so  much  that  he  does  not  request  a  subsequent  "date"  in  the 
near  future  she  is  equally  a  loser.  To  remain  the  winner,  she  must  make  the 
nicest  discriminations  between  yielding  and  rigidity. 

The  man  scores  to  the  extent  that  he  is  able  to  get  more  favors  from  the 
girl  than  his  rivals,  real  or  supposed,  would  be  able  to  do.  The  proving  time 
is  the  return  journey  from  the  place  of  public  entertainment  to  the  girl's 
home.  A  good-night  kiss  is  almost  the  minimum  repayment  for  an  evening's 
entertainment;  but  how  much  more  depends  on  the  enterprise  of  the  man, 
the  self-assurance  of  the  woman,  and  the  number  of  "dates"  the  pair  have 
had  together.  This  love-making  is  still  emotionally  uninvolved;  it  is  still  part 
of  the  game,  though  the  gestures  and  intimacies  and  language  are  identical 
with  true  love-making;  it  is  not,  save  most  rarely,  an  attempt  at  seduction; 
and  the  satisfactions  sought  are  not,  in  the  first  instance,  sensual  but  self- 
regarding.  The  man  should  demonstrate  his  enterprise  and  prove  that  he  is 
worthy  to  be  loved  by  pressing  for  ever  further  favors;  but  the  girl  who 
yields  too  much,  or  too  easily,  may  well  be  a  disappointment,  in  exactly 
the  same  way  as  too  easy  a  victory  in  tennis  or  chess  may  be  a  disappoint- 
ment. 


A  Student  at  His  Book 

Ascribed  to  Sir  "Bernard  JWosber  •  i497-i580? 


Perhaps  old  Sir  Bernard  Mosher's  sixteenth-century  student  should 
have  had  the  advantage  of  reading  Geoffrey  Gorer's  twentieth-century 
explanation  that  dating  isn't  to  be  confused  with  courtship.  Anyway, 
his  wry  little  poem  is  a  warning  against  a  too-hasty  running  from  book 
to  wife. 


Readers  and  College  Life  67 

A  STUDENT  at  his  book,  so  placed 
That  wealth  he  might  have  won, 
From  book  to  wife  did  fleet  in  haste, 
From  wealth  to  woe  did  run. 
Now,  who  hath  played  a  feater  cast, 
Since  juggling  first  begun? 
In  knitting  of  himself  so  fast, 
Himself  he  hath  undone. 


A  Great  Teacher's  Method 

Samuel  Jf.  Scudder  •  i837-i9ii 


What  makes  a  teacher  great?  A  great  personality?  Great  learning? 
A  great  method?  Thinking  of  the  poor,  ineffectual  Miss  Groby's  (see 
pages  30-32),  think  also  of  great  teachers  you  have  known  and  try  to 
analyze  what  made  them  great;  or  take  only  one  whose  teaching  has 
made  a  real  difference  in  your  life  and  try  to  explain  how  that  teacher 
achieved  the  effect.  In  this  instance,  Scudder  shows  how  Agassiz  used 
an  apparently  simple  method  to  teach  a  great  lesson. 

IT  WAS  more  than  fifteen  years  ago  [about  1858]  that  I  entered  the  laboratory 
of  Professor  Agassiz,  and  told  him  I  had  enrolled  my  name  in  the  Scientific 
School  as  a  student  of  natural  history.  He  asked  me  a  few  questions  about 
my  object  in  coming,  my  antecedents  generally,  the  mode  in  which  I  after- 
wards proposed  to  use  the  knowledge  I  might  acquire,  and,  finally,  whether 
I  wished  to  study  any  special  branch.  To  the  latter  I  replied  that,  while  I 
wished  to  be  well  grounded  in  all  departments  of  zoology,  I  purposed  to 
devote  myself  specially  to  insects. 

"When  do  you  wish  to  begin?"  he  asked. 

"Now,"  I  replied. 

This  seemed  to  please  him,  and  with  an  energetic  "Very  well!"  he  reached 
from  a  shelf  a  huge  jar  of  specimens  in  yellow  alcohol. 

"Take  this  fish,"  said  he,  "and  look  at  it;  we  call  it  a  haemulon;  by  and  by 
I  will  ask  what  you  have  seen." 

With  that  he  left  me,  but  in  a  moment  returned  with  explicit  instructions 
as  to  the  care  of  the  object  entrusted  to  me. 

"No  man  is  fit  to  be  a  naturalist,"  said  he,  "who  does  not  know  how  to 
take  care  of  specimens." 

I  was  to  keep  the  fish  before  me  in  a  tin  tray,  and  occasionally  moisten 

From  Evtry  Saturday  (April  4,  1874)  16,  369-370. 


68  Reader 

the  surface  with  alcohol  from  the  jar,  always  taking  care  to  replace  the 
stopper  tightly.  Those  were  not  the  days  of  ground-glass  stoppers  and  ele- 
gantly shaped  exhibition  jars;  all  the  old  students  will  recall  the  huge  neck- 
less  glass  bottles  with  their  leaky,  wax-besmeared  corks,  half  eaten  by  in- 
sects, and  begrimed  with  cellar  dust.  Entomology  was  a  cleaner  science  than 
ichthyology,  but  the  example  of  the  Professor,  who  had  unhesitatingly 
plunged  to  the  bottom  of  the  jar  to  produce  the  fish,  was  infectious;  and 
though  this  alcohol  had  a  "very  ancient  and  fishlike  smell,"  I  really  dared 
not  show  any  aversion  within  these  sacred  precincts,  and  treated  the  alcohol 
as  though  it  were  pure  water.  Still  I  was  conscious  of  a  passing  feeling  of 
disappointment,  for  gazing  at  a  fish  did  not  commend  itself  to  an  ardent 
entomologist.  My  friends  at  home,  too,  were  annoyed  when  they  discovered 
that  no  amount  of  eau-de-Cologne  would  drown  the  perfume  which  haunted 
me  like  a  shadow. 

In  ten  minutes  I  had  seen  all  that  could  be  seen  in  that  fish,  and  started  in 
search  of  the  Professor  —  who  had,  however,  left  the  Museum;  and  when  I 
returned,  after  lingering  over  some  of  the  odd  animals  stored  in  the  upper 
apartment,  my  specimen  was  dry  all  over.  I  dashed  the  fluid  over  the  fish 
as  if  to  resuscitate  the  beast  from  a  fainting-fit,  and  looked  with  anxiety  for 
a  return  of  the  normal  sloppy  appearance.  This  little  excitement  over, 
nothing  was  to  be  done  but  to  return  to  a  steadfast  gaze  at  my  mute  com- 
panion. Half  an  hour  passed  —  an  hour  —  another  hour;  the  fish  began  to 
look  loathsome.  I  turned  it  over  and  around;  looked  it  in  the  face  —  ghastly; 
from  behind,  beneath,  above,  sideways,  at  a  three-quarters'  view  —  just 
as  ghastly.  I  was  in  despair;  at  an  early  hour  I  concluded  that  lunch  was 
necessary;  so,  with  infinite  relief,  the  fish  was  carefully  replaced  in  the  jar, 
and  for  an  hour  I  was  free. 

On  my  return,  I  learned  that  Professor  Agassiz  had  been  at  the  Museum, 
but  had  gone,  and  would  not  return  for  several  hours.  My  fellow-students 
were  too  busy  to  be  disturbed  by  continued  conversation.  Slowly  I  drew 
forth  that  hideous  fish,  and  with  a  feeling  of  desperation  again  looked  at  it. 
I  might  not  use  a  magnifying-glass;  instruments  of  all  kinds  were  inter- 
dicted. My  two  hands,  my  two  eyes,  and  the  fish:  it  seemed  a  most  limited 
field.  I  pushed  my  finger  down  its  throat  to  feel  how  sharp  the  teeth  were. 
I  began  to  count  the  scales  in  the  different  rows,  until  I  was  convinced  that 
that  was  nonsense.  At  last  a  happy  thought  struck  me  —  I  would  draw  the 
fish;  and  now  with  surprise  I  began  to  discover  new  features  in  the  creature. 
Just  then  the  Professor  returned. 

"That  is  right,"  said  he;  "a  pencil  is  one  of  the  best  of  eyes.  I  am  glad  to 
notice,  too,  that  you  keep  your  specimen  wet,  and  your  bottle  corked/* 

With  these  encouraging  words,  he  added: 

"Well,  what  is  it  like?" 

He  listened  attentively  to  my  brief  rehearsal  of  the  structure  of  parts 
whose  names  were  still  unknown  to  me:  the  fringed  gill-arches  and  mova- 
ble operculum;  the  pores  of  the  head,  fleshy  lips  and  lidless  eyes;  the 
lateral  line,  the  spinous  fins  and  forked  tail;  the  compressed  and  arched 


Readers  and  College  Life  69 

body.  When  I  had  finished,  he  waited  as  if  expecting  more,  and  then,  with 
an  air  of  disappointment: 

"You  have  not  looked  very  carefully;  why,"  he  continued  more  earnestly, 
"you  haven't  even  seen  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  features  of  the  animal, 
which  is  as  plainly  before  your  eyes  as  the  fish  itself;  look  again,  look 
again!"  and  he  left  me  to  my  misery. 

I  was  piqued;  I  was  mortified.  Still  more  of  that  wretched  fish!  But  now 
I  set  myself  to  my  task  with  a  will,  and  discovered  one  new  thing  after  an- 
other, until  I  saw  how  just  the  Professor's  criticism  had  been.  The  after- 
noon passed  quickly;  and  when,  toward  its  close,  the  Professor  inquired: 

"Do  you  see  it  yet?" 

"No,"  I  replied,  "I  am  certain  I  do  not,  but  I  see  how  little  I  saw  before/' 

"That  is  next  best,"  said  he,  earnestly,  "but  I  won't  hear  you  now;  put 
away  your  fish  and  go  home;  perhaps  you  will  be  ready  with  a  better  an- 
swer in  the  morning.  I  will  examine  you  before  you  look  at  the  fish." 

This  was  disconcerting.  Not  only  must  I  think  of  my  fish  all  night,  study- 
ing, without  the  object  before  me,  what  this  unknown  but  most  visible 
feature  might  be;  but  also,  without  reviewing  my  discoveries,  I  must  give 
an  exact  account  of  them  the  next  day.  I  had  a  bad  memory;  so  I  walked 
home  by  Charles  River  in  a  distracted  state,  with  my  two  perplexities. 

The  cordial  greeting  from  the  Professor  the  next  morning  was  reassuring; 
here  was  a  man  who  seemed  to  be  quite  as  anxious  as  I  that  I  should  see  for 
myself  what  he  saw. 

"Do  you  perhaps  mean,"  I  asked,  "that  the  fish  has  symmetrical  sides 
with  paired  organs?" 

His  thoroughly  pleased  "Of  course!  of  course!"  repaid  the  wakeful  hours 
of  the  previous  night.  After  he  had  discoursed  most  happily  and  enthusi- 
astically—  as  he  always  did  —  upon  the  importance  of  this  point,  I  ven- 
tured to  ask  what  I  should  do  next. 

"Oh,  look  at  your  fish!"  he  said,  and  left  me  again  to  my  own  devices.  In 
a  little  more  than  an  hour  he  returned,  and  heard  my  new  catalogue. 

"That  is  good,  that  is  good!"  he  repeated;  "but  that  is  not  all;  go  on";  and 
so  for  three  long  days  he  placed  that  fish  before  my  eyes,  forbidding  me 
to  look  at  anything  else,  or  to  use  any  artificial  aid.  "Look,  look,  look,"  was 
his  repeated  injunction. 

This  was  the  best  entomological  lesson  I  ever  had  —  a  lesson  whose  in- 
fluence has  extended  to  the  details  of  every  subsequent  study;  a  legacy  the 
Professor  had  left  to  me,  as  he  has  left  it  to  many  others,  of  inestimable 
value,  which  we  could  not  buy,  with  which  we  cannot  part. 

A  year  afterward,  some  of  us  were  amusing  ourselves  with  chalking  out- 
landish beasts  on  the  Museum  blackboard.  We  drew  prancing  starfishes; 
frogs  in  mortal  combat;  hydra-headed  worms;  stately  crawfishes,  standing 
on  their  tails,  bearing  aloft  umbrellas;  and  grotesque  fishes  with  gaping 
mouths  and  staring  eyes.  The  Professor  came  in  shortly  after,  and  was  as 
amused  as  any  at  our  experiments.  He  looked  at  the  fishes. 

"Haemulons,  every  one  of  them,"  he  said;  "Mr. drew  them." 


70  Reader 

True;  and  to  this  day,  if  I  attempt  a  fish,  I  can  draw  nothing  but 
haemulons. 

The  fourth  day,  a  second  fish  of  the  same  group  was  placed  beside  the 
first,  and  I  was  bidden  to  point  out  the  resemblances  and  differences  be- 
tween the  two;  another  and  another  followed,  until  the  entire  family  lay 
before  me,  and  a  whole  legion  of  jars  covered  the  table  and  surrounding 
shelves;  the  odor  had  become  a  pleasant  perfume;  and  even  now,  the  sight 
of  an  old,  six-inch,  worm-eaten  cork  brings  fragrant  memories. 

The  whole  group  of  haemulons  was  thus  brought  in  review;  and,  whether 
engaged  upon  the  dissection  of  the  internal  organs,  the  preparation  and 
examination  of  the  bony  framework,  or  the  description  of  the  various  parts, 
Agassiz's  training  in  the  method  of  observing  facts  and  their  orderly  ar- 
rangement was  ever  accompanied  by  the  urgent  exhortation  not  to  be  con- 
tent with  them. 

"Facts  are  stupid  things,"  he  would  say,  "until  brought  into  connection 
with  some  general  law." 

At  the  end  of  eight  months,  it  was  almost  with  reluctance  that  I  left 
these  friends  and  turned  to  insects;  but  what  I  had  gained  by  this  outside 
experience  has  been  of  greater  value  than  years  of  later  investigation  in  my 
favorite  groups. 


The  University    ** 

Barnes  'Bryant  Conant  •  4893- 


What  is  a  university?  What  are  its  functions?  How  does  it  differ 
from  a  college?  For  the  national  good,  not  simply  for  personal  ad- 
vantage, who  should  have  a  higher  education?  The  earlier  essays  in  this 
section  take  up  some  issues  of  college  life  and  learning,  but  mostly  in 
immediately  recognizable,  personal  terms  of  students  and  teachers, 
their  life  and  ways.  In  this  essay  James  Bryant  Conant,  until  recently 
president  of  Harvard,  goes  into  some  basic  questions  about  the  nature 
and  functions  of  our  institutions  of  higher  learning.  You  will  probably 
find  the  essay  rather  difficult  because  the  terms  are  impersonal,  the 
perspective  broadly  historical  and  philosophical,  and  the  language  some- 
what abstract.  But  you  will  also  find  it  valuable  to  your  understanding 
of  your  actual  situation,  for  the  chances  are  that,  like  most  students, 
you  have  moved  up  from  high  school  into  college  or  university  with 
only  the  haziest  conception  of  what  these  advanced  schools  are,  in  their 
institutional  nature  and  functions. 

Reprinted  by  permission  of  the  publishers  from  James  Bryant  Conant,  Education  in 
a  Divided  World.  Cambridge,  Mass.:  Harvard  University  Press,  Copyright,  1948,  by  The 
President  and  Fellows  of  Harvard  College.  Pp.  153-171. 


Readers  and  College  Life  71 

THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD  in  a  young  man's  life  as  far  as  the  relation  of  his  educa- 
tion to  his  career  is  concerned  lies  between  the  ages  of  sixteen  and  twenty- 
one.  If  he  drops  out  of  high  school,  or  finishes  high  school  and  does  not  go 
on  to  a  university,  many  roads  are  barred;  for  example,  only  with  the 
greatest  difficulty  can  he  become  a  doctor,  lawyer,  or  engineer.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  he  graduates  from  a  four-year  liberal  arts  college,  in  many 
cases  he  will  consider  that  his  "higher  education"  was  thrown  away  if  he 
takes  up  an  occupation  largely  recruited  from  non-college  men.  Assuming 
for  the  moment  that  all  barriers  of  economics  and  geography  and  national 
origins  were  swept  aside  by  a  magic  wand,  how  would  a  wise  educator 
proceed  to  plan  the  education  of  thousands  of  young  men  in  any  one  of  the 
forty-eight  different  states?  Is  everyone  to  go  to  college?  If  so,  what  kind 
of  college?  If  not,  on  what  basis  are  some  to  be  denied  "the  privileges  of 
a  higher  education"? 

To  my  mind  the  crux  of  the  problem  is  to  be  found  in  such  phrases  as 
"the  privileges  of  a  higher  education."  If  we  could  eliminate  the  word 
"higher"  we  could  at  least  make  a  start  toward  thinking  more  clearly  about 
the  relation  of  our  colleges  to  the  structure  of  American  society.  For  the 
adjective  "higher"  implies  at  once  that  those  who  do  not  go  to  a  university 
or  a  four-year  college  are  forever  on  a  lower  plane.  And  any  discerning 
teacher  in  our  secondary  schools  will  testify  that  the  social  implications  of 
"going  to  college"  weigh  quite  as  heavily  with  parents  and  children  as  does 
proven  aptitude  for  college  work.  Furthermore,  any  placement  officer  of  a 
college  knows  full  well  that  it  is  a  rare  holder  of  a  bachelor's  degree  who  is 
eager  to  take  up  as  his  lif ework  a  trade  or  vocation  for  which  he  might  have 
been  trained  in  a  technical  high  school. 

In  the  last  fifty  years  in  many  sections  of  the  country  the  colleges  have 
been  considered  to  no  small  degree  as  vocational  ladders  (though  many  a 
professor  would  shudder  at  the  term )  not  because  of  the  intellectual  content 
of  their  curricula  or  the  training  of  the  mind,  but  because  of  the  "friends 
one  made."  The  tendency  of  management  to  hire  only  college  men  as  junior 
executives  is  merely  one  manifestation  of  the  undefined  but  very  definite 
recognition  on  the  part  of  ambitious  people  that  "without  a  college  educa- 
tion you  cannot  get  ahead."  The  practice  of  the  Armed  Services  during  the 
war  and  the  public  statements  of  some  high  ranking  officers  have  increased 
this  feeling.  The  extent  to  which  such  ideas  confuse  our  thinking  about  edu- 
cation beyond  the  high  school  can  hardly  be  exaggerated. 

Let  us  eliminate  all  the  hierarchical  overtones  from  the  word  "higher" 
and  get  squared  away  for  a  discussion  of  high  school  and  college  in  terms 
of  the  ideal  of  equality  of  educational  opportunity.  Instead  of  raising  the 
question,  "Who  should  be  educated?"  let  us  rather  consider  the  problem, 
"How  long  should  be  the  education  of  the  members  of  each  vocation?"  Of 
course,  those  who  consciously  or  unconsciously  reject  the  premise  of  work- 
ing toward  a  more  fluid  social  order  should  stick  to  the  phrase  "higher 
education"  and  underline  the  adjective.  Anyone  who  wishes  to  solve  our 


72  Reader 

educational  problems  along  hereditary  class  lines  is  well  advised  to  support 
an  educational  pattern  in  which  collegiate  training  is  primarily  for  students 
who  can  pay  for  it  —  this  training  to  be  suitable  both  for  those  who  enter 
the  professions  and  for  those  who  are  to  be  managers  of  industry  and  com- 
merce. Public  education  would  then  be  largely  concerned  with  providing 
another  type  of  terminal  schooling  for  future  clerical  workers,  still  another 
for  manual  workers,  and  so  on  through  a  close-knit  stratified  social  system. 
The  exceptionally  brilliant  boy,  measured  in  academic  terms,  can  be  taken 
care  of  under  such  an  arrangement  by  a  relatively  inexpensive  system  of 
scholarships,  or  at  least  he  can  in  theory. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  we  want  to  move  toward  a  more  flexible  social 
structure,  we  must  consider  the  final  years  of  formal  education  not  as  a 
privilege  of  those  who  can  afford  to  pay,  or  to  be  won  by  a  few  with  high 
scholastic  skill  —  but  something  open  to  all  who  deserve  it  and  need  it. 
And  the  emphasis  on  the  word  "need"  is  all-important,  provided  we  define 
"need"  in  terms  of  subsequent  vocation. 

It  seems  evident  at  first  sight  that  certain  vocations  require  longer  periods 
of  formal  training  than  do  others.  As  now  conceived,  public  health  tops  the 
list;  medicine  and  the  academic  careers  requiring  a  Ph.D.  in  arts  or  letters 
are  next;  research  in  science  is  not  far  behind;  then  come  law  and  engineer- 
ing —  to  name  only  a  few  of  the  well-recognized  professions.  All  of  these 
have  demanded,  in  the  past,  at  least  four  years  beyond  high  school,  medi- 
cine usually  eight.  Not  only  do  these  vocations  require  a  long  period  of 
formal  education,  but  the  nature  of  the  general  as  well  as  the  specialized 
work  corresponds  to  the  orientation  of  the  able  student  measured  in  terms 
of  college  grades.  The  path  to  these  occupations  might  well  separate  from 
the  main  educational  road  at  the  end  of  high  school.  In  the  first  years  of 
this  century  this  path  was  the  main  road  and  indeed  almost  the  only  way  to 
the  learned  professions.  The  universities  supplied  professional  education; 
the  four-year  colleges  either  as  separate  institutions  or  within  the  universi- 
ties fed  the  university  professional  schools. 

But,  as  already  indicated,  during  the  last  fifty  years  the  four-year  col- 
leges have  been  the  pathway  not  only  to  the  professions  but  to  white-collar 
jobs  in  business.  The  number  and  nature  of  the  professions  have  expanded, 
to  be  sure,  and  the  success  of  the  agricultural  colleges  has  blurred  the  dis- 
tinction in  certain  states.  By  and  large  the  opinion  that  higher  education 
is  to  be  equated  with  a  bachelor's  degree  from  a  four-year  institution  has 
been  gaining  ground  for  a  generation. 

I  hope  to  show  in  this  and  the  following  chapter  that  this  pattern  can 
and  should  be  altered.  The  time  has  come,  it  seems  to  many  educators, 
when  we  must  distinguish  more  clearly  between  professional  training  (the 
characteristic  educational  function  of  a  university)  and  a  combination  of 
general  education  and  vocational  training  which  may  be  accomplished  in 
local  two-year  terminal  colleges.  In  presenting  this  thesis,  it  would  be 
logical  to  consider  the  two-year  college  first  and  then  go  on  to  analyze  the 


Readers  and  College  Life  73 

functions  of  a  university.  But  such  a  procedure  would  be  unrealistic,  for 
today  the  two-year  local  college  is  still  in  the  process  of  development 
whereas  the  university  has  already  assumed  a  very  definite  status.  Before 
urging  reforms,  therefore,  which  alter  to  some  degree  the  accepted  pattern 
of  education  beyond  the  high  school,  we  need  to  examine  the  present  state 
of  advanced  education  in  the  United  States.  In  particular,  we  must  under- 
stand the  history  of  American  universities  and  the  way  their  growth  has 
reflected  some  of  the  characteristics  of  our  society. 

A  century  and  a  half  ago  no  one  could  have  foreseen  that  the  university 
tradition  as  imported  to  this  continent  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  was  to  undergo  a  significant  mutation.  No  one  then  could  have 
predicted  that  exposure  to  the  social  and  political  climate  of  the  United 
States,  to  alternate  blasts  of  Jeffersonian  and  Jacksonian  democracy  in 
particular,  was  to  bring  about  an  academic  revolution  and  that  the  state 
universities  were  to  play  a  leading  role  in  the  transformation;  but  such  was 
in  fact  the  case. 

Only  in  the  last  fifty  years  has  the  reality  of  the  change  in  species  become 
apparent  to  all  observers,  and  only  in  the  last  twenty-five  years  has  the  true 
significance  of  the  alteration  been  widely  understood.  Even  today  there  are 
those  who  regard  the  change  as  a  mere  temporary  and  extremely  regrettable 
aberration  to  be  attacked  by  drastic  surgery  —  pruned  or  cut  back,  as  it 
were,  to  conform  to  the  older  European  model  of  a  perfect  university. 

But  what  is  this  university  tradition  which  has  undergone  a  revolution  in 
American  hands  —  a  revolution  equivalent  to  a  biological  mutation?  In- 
deed, what  is  a  university?  How  shall  we  define  the  genus?  For  nearly  a 
thousand  years  there  have  been  universities  in  the  Western  World;  to  un- 
derstand the  present  institutions,  we  must  therefore  comprehend  something 
of  their  history.  For  while  there  have  been  several  clear  and  distinct 
changes  in  the  pattern,  the  essence  of  the  university  tradition  has  through 
all  these  years  remained  constant.  We  can  describe  a  university,  it  seems  to 
me,  as  a  community  of  scholars  with  a  considerable  degree  of  independence 
and  self-government,  concerned  with  professional  education,  the  advance- 
ment of  knowledge,  and  the  general  education  of  the  leading  citizens.  To 
accomplish  these  three  ends,  it  has  been  found  desirable  often  —  but  not 
always  —  to  incorporate  into  the  community  of  scholars  a  community  of 
students.  Thus  arose  what  has  been  termed  the  "collegiate  way  of  living." 
Thus  came  about  the  emphasis  on  what  we  now  call  the  "extracurricular" 
educational  values. 

As  the  university  tradition  came  to  America,  it  was  based  on  four  ultimate 
sources  of  strength:  the  cultivation  of  learning  for  its  own  sake,  the  educa- 
tional stream  that  makes  possible  the  professions,  the  general  educational 
stream  of  the  liberal  arts,  and,  lastly,  the  never-failing  river  of  student  life 
carrying  all  the  power  that  comes  from  the  gregarious  impulses  of  human 
beings.  According  to  my  view,  universities  have  flourished  when  these  four 
elements  have  been  properly  in  balance;  on  the  other  hand,  when  one  or 


74  Reader 

more  of  these  same  elements  has  diminished  or  dried  up,  the  academies  of 
advanced  instruction  have  failed  signally  in  performing  a  relevant  social 
function. 

The  cultivation  of  learning  alone  produces  not  a  university  but  a  research 
institute;  sole  concern  with  student  life  produces  in  these  days  either  an 
academic  country  club  or  a  football  team  maneuvering  under  a  collegiate 
banner;  professional  education  by  itself  results  in  nothing  but  a  trade 
school;  an  institution  concerned  with  general  education,  even  in  the  best 
liberal  arts  tradition,  divorced  from  research  and  training  for  the  profes- 
sions is  admittedly  not  a  university  but  a  college.  Therefore,  to  my  mind, 
the  future  of  the  American  university  depends  primarily  on  keeping  a 
balance  between  these  four  traditional  elements  of  strength.  These  four 
elements  were  the  basis  of  the  properly  balanced  plan  in  a  time  when 
universities  were  flourishing;  they  must  continue  to  be  in  balance  if  the 
American  university  is  to  fulfill  its  proper  functions  in  the  times  that  are  to 
come. 

But  what  is  there  new,  one  may  ask,  about  the  American  university,  and 
how  does  the  novelty  (if  any)  affect  the  prospects  for  its  future?  The 
mutation,  I  believe,  occurred  in  two  of  the  four  historic  elements  of  which 
I  speak:  namely,  professional  education,  and  general  education  of  the 
leading  citizens.  The  first  was  a  change  in  content,  an  enormous  growth; 
the  second,  a  change  in  type  of  student.  Both  represent  a  vast  broadening 
of  the  educational  goals;  both  present  us  with  problems  still  unsolved.  The 
changes  have  been  to  a  large  degree  unconscious  responses  to  social  forces, 
and  often  the  rationalization  of  the  transformations  has  been  in  other 
terms  than  I  shall  use. 

As  public  secondary  education  expanded  in  the  last  decades  of  the 
nineteenth  century  and  in  the  first  half  of  the  twentieth,  the  colleges  and 
universities  likewise  expanded.  Not  only  were  the  applicants  more  numer- 
ous, they  were  much  more  heterogeneous  as  to  backgrounds  and  ambitions. 
Furthermore,  the  political,  social,  and  economic  development  of  the  United 
States  vastly  altered  the  way  in  which  the  public  regarded  education.  As 
the  years  went  by,  it  became  more  and  more  evident  that  in  our  complex 
industrialized  society  mere  ability  to  read  and  write,  added  to  native  wit, 
was  not  enough.  With  the  passing  of  the  frontier,  the  pioneer  spirit  was 
turned  away  from  new  lands  toward  new  industries.  And  to  manage  mod- 
ern industry  requires  more  than  a  high  school  education  —  at  least  for  all 
but  the  very  exceptional  man. 

With  increasing  industrialization  went  increasing  urbanization,  a  higher 
standard  of  living,  and  a  vast  number  of  services  available  for  city  and 
town  dwellers,  more  and  more  new  mechanical  and  electrical  devices  dis- 
tributed widely  among  the  population  —  automobiles,  electric  refrigerators, 
and  radios,  to  mention  the  most  obvious  examples.  All  this  industrial  expan- 
sion required  more  and  more  men  and  women  with  a  larger  and  different 
educational  experience  than  would  have  been  necessary  fifty  years  earlier 
to  run  a  farm,  a  store,  or  even  a  bank. 


Readers  and  College  Life  75 

The  pressure  on  the  universities,  therefore,  to  educate  men  and  women 
for  specific  vocations  both  increased  and  diversified.  Beginning  with  the 
Morrill  Act,  the  public  had  recognized  the  need  for  education  in  agriculture 
and  the  mechanical  and  industrial  arts.  Many  a  state  in  the  Union  made  the 
significant  step  of  combining  the  new  agricultural  and  industrial  arts 
colleges  with  an  older  state  college  of  arts  and  letters.  Perhaps  one  could 
say  that  from  this  union  came  the  new  American  university.  But,  if  so,  the 
transformation  rapidly  spread  elsewhere.  Even  before  the  great  influx  in 
numbers,  the  pattern  had  been  set  in  publicly  controlled  and  privately 
controlled  universities  alike;  the  mechanical  and  industrial  arts  (later  to  be 
known  as  engineering)  and  agriculture  were  recognized  as  being  on  a  par, 
at  least  in  theory,  with  divinity,  medicine,  and  law. 

As  the  twentieth  century  grew  older,  both  the  enrollments  in  our  uni- 
versities and  the  diversity  of  the  training  increased  with  each  decade.  The 
word  "profession,"  in  danger  of  being  stretched  beyond  the  elastic  limit, 
was  supplemented  by  the  phrase  "semi-profession."  But  soon  the  voice  of 
the  critic  was  heard  in  the  land.  Able  and  distinguished  citizens  became 
alarmed  at  this  transformation  of  the  idea  of  a  university  in  American  hands. 
When  you  once  abandon  the  concept  of  a  university  as  a  home  of  learning, 
a  place  where  the  life  of  the  mind  is  to  be  cultivated  at  all  costs,  you  destroy 
our  centers  of  higher  education,  they  declared. 

But  in  spite  of  those  outcries  and  lamentations,  the  development  pro- 
ceeded on  its  way.  One  of  our  oldest  universities  strengthened  its  school  of 
business  administration,  another  continued  to  give  degrees  in  forestry  and 
nursing,  while  privately  controlled  universities  in  urban  areas  were  as 
catholic  in  their  offerings  as  any  financed  by  the  state.  One  element  of  the 
ancient  four  —  professional  education  —  had  received  nourishment  from 
the  combination  of  democracy  and  industrialization.  It  was  forced  to  pro- 
liferate in  a  way  to  shock  the  admirers  of  the  ancient  stem.  All  manner  of 
new  vocations  were  assimilated  within  the  sacred  walls  of  a  university,  and 
graduates  armed  with  special  training  in  a  variety  of  skills  stood  on  the 
commencement  platform  as  proudly  as  the  future  members  of  the  clergy  or 
the  bar. 

In  short,  in  the  course  of  seventy-five  years  or  so  the  forces  of  democracy 
had  taken  the  European  idea  of  a  university  and  transformed  it.  The 
American  university  today  is  as  different  from  the  nineteenth-century 
British  or  Continental  universities  as  the  Renaissance  universities  of  Italy 
and  the  Netherlands  were  different  from  those  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Per- 
sonally, I  think  the  basic  philosophy  which  almost  unconsciously  has  shaped 
the  growth  of  the  modern  American  university  is  sound,  for  it  is  none  other 
than  a  philosophy  hostile  to  the  supremacy  of  a  few  vocations:  it  is  a 
philosophy  moving  toward  the  social  equality  of  all  useful  labor. 

As  an  offset  to  this  increased  emphasis  on  professional  training  (for  I 
regard  all  university  vocational  education  as  a  derivative  of  the  ancient 
professions),  there  came  about  a  strong  movement  to  make  American  uni- 
versities centers  of  scholarly  work  and  scientific  investigation.  This  move- 


76  Reader 

ment  was  not  only  to  some  degree  a  counterbalance  to  the  educational 
forces  associated  with  the  agricultural  and  mechanical  colleges,  but  also  a 
response  to  a  challenge  to  make  of  some  of  the  older  institutions  something 
more  than  advanced  boarding  schools  for  a  special  group. 

In  the  middle  of  the  last  century  the  head  of  one  of  the  Oxford  colleges, 
an  eminent  scholar  and  educational  reformer,  saw  no  evidence  that  the  uni- 
versity tradition  had  ever  taken  root  in  the  United  States.  ''America  has  no 
universities,  as  we  understand  the  term,"  he  wrote,  "the  institutions  so-called 
being  merely  places  for  granting  titular  degrees."  Taken  literally  this  harsh 
judgment  is  undoubtedly  false;  yet  it  probably  is  not  a  gross  exaggeration 
of  the  situation  which  then  existed.  The  new  spirit  moving  within  the  edu- 
cational institutions  of  the  country  had  not  become  evident  to  those  outside 
our  academic  walls. 

It  was  not  until  the  Johns  Hopkins  University  was  opened  at  Baltimore 
that  the  idea  of  a  university  as  a  center  of  advanced  learning  came  to  have 
a  prominent  place  in  the  public  mind.  It  was  not  until  Gilman  had  boldly 
proclaimed  that  "all  departments  of  learning  should  be  promoted"  and  that 
"the  glory  of  the  university  should  rest  upon  the  character  of  the  teachers 
and  scholars  .  .  ,  and  not  upon  their  number  nor  upon  the  buildings  con- 
structed for  their  use"  —  it  was  not  until  then  that  scholarship  came  into 
its  own  again  as  part  of  the  university  tradition  of  the  United  States. 

From  this  development,  as  we  all  know,  came  the  growth  of  the  graduate 
schools  of  arts  and  sciences,  the  introduction  of  new  standards  of  excellence 
in  regard  to  original  work  by  scientists  and  scholars,  and  the  growth  of 
what  is  now  sometimes  referred  to  as  the  Ph.D.  octopus.  All  this  was  slow 
at  first  but,  like  the  other  changes  in  the  universities  of  America,  gained 
speed  during  the  period  just  before  and  just  after  the  first  World  War.  As 
a  consequence,  the  American  university  has  been  in  recent  years  something 
of  a  mental  patient  suffering  from  a  schizophrenic  disorder:  on  one  day,  or 
during  one  administration,  the  disciplines  grouped  under  the  banner  of  the 
arts,  letters,  and  sciences  represent  the  dominant  personality;  on  another 
day,  or  during  another  administration,  it  is  the  vocational  procession  led  by 
law  and  medicine  that  sweeps  all  before  it. 

But,  as  so  often  happens  in  the  delightful  chaos  of  American  democracy, 
the  various  pressure  groups  to  a  large  degree  canceled  out.  Looking  back 
over  the  history  of  this  century,  we  can  see  that  the  American  universities 
drew  strength  from  many  different  sources.  The  fact  that  the  forces  making 
for  the  new  developments  were  not  only  often  totally  unrelated  but  at 
times  apparently  working  one  against  another  made  little  difference;  the 
expansion  and  strengthening  of  the  entire  institution  continued  almost 
without  interruption.  The  nature  of  the  typical  American  university  had 
emerged;  whether  any  given  institution  was  state-controlled  or  privately 
supported  made  little  difference  in  the  pattern.  In  some  states  there  was  a 
comprehensive  system  comprising  several  constituent  members;  in  others  all 
work  was  included  in  one  academic  institution. 

As  to  the  variety  of  the  vocational  training,  one  university  or  one  uni- 


Readers  and  College  Life  77 

versity  system  might  show  considerable  divergence  from  another;  as  to 
the  strength  of  the  faculties,  there  were,  of  course,  wide  differences;  but 
as  to  their  ideas  of  undergraduate  education  and  their  devotion  to  the 
welfare  of  the  students,  there  was  remarkable  uniformity  among  them  all. 
The  significant  fact  was  that  no  university  which  gave  degrees  in  the 
ancient  professions  of  medicine  or  law  remained  aloof  from  also  giving 
degrees  in  such  modern  subjects  as  business  administration,  engineering, 
journalism,  forestry,  architecture,  nursing,  or  education.  And  many  were 
awarding  the  bachelor's  degree  for  courses  of  study  in  vocational  fields  very 
distant,  indeed,  from  the  traditional  disciplines  of  the  arts  and  sciences. 

To  complete  this  brief  and  inadequate  account  of  the  Americanization 
of  the  university  idea,  it  remains  only  to  discuss  general  education  as  apart 
from  vocational  education.  I  have  earlier  referred  to  the  "general  education 
of  the  leading  citizens"  as  one  of  those  traditional  elements  in  the  university 
pattern  which  have  remained  constant  through  the  centuries.  A  volume 
would  be  required  to  do  justice  to  this  aspect  of  the  work  of  universities  in 
different  countries  and  in  different  periods  of  history.  In  a  sense,  this  phase 
of  university  education  is  a  by-product  of  the  two  main  preoccupations  of 
the  scholars:  the  advancement  of  learning,  and  education  for  the  professions 
—  which  includes,  of  course,  the  training  of  new  scholars.  In  a  sense,  it  is  a 
by-product  —  yet  a  by-product  which  in  the  public  eye  ( including  the  eye 
of  future  students)  has  often  loomed  as  large  as  all  the  other  functions  of 
the  university  put  together.  And  the  larger  it  loomed  the  more  emphasis 
we  find  put  on  student  life,  which  has  manifested  itself  in  ways  as  different 
as  the  Oxford  colleges,  the  German  dueling  clubs,  and  the  American  zest 
for  intercollegiate  athletics. 

If  we  examine  the  role  of  the  universities  in  the  English-speaking  coun- 
tries in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  we  find  a  fair  proportion 
of  the  students  preparing  not  for  the  church  or  the  bar,  but  for  public 
service  or  a  career  in  letters.  In  England  only  slowly,  in  the  Colonies  more 
rapidly,  the  merchant  families  came  to  send  their  boys  to  a  college  or  uni- 
versity in  order  to  obtain  the  sort  of  general  education  required  by  the 
business  positions  they  would  later  occupy.  In  terms  of  the  total  popula- 
tion, the  number  of  young  men  who  pursued  this  road,  however,  was  small 
indeed.  For  the  most  part,  only  a  special  set  of  relatively  wealthy  families 
patronized  the  colleges  and  universities  for  this  purpose;  the  poor  boy 
entered  only  if  he  desired  to  become  a  scholar  or  a  member  of  a  learned 
profession. 

The  numbers  were  small  in  the  eighteenth  century  and  the  first  part  of 
the  nineteenth,  because,  except  to  those  in  the  professions  I  have  men- 
tioned, the  education  thus  acquired  was  of  but  little  significance  in  later 
life.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  situation  throughout  America  as  late  as 
the  middle  of  the  last  century.  But  then  matters  began  to  change.  As  part 
of  the  educational  expansion  more  and  more  boys  began  to  enter  colleges 
and  universities,  not  to  study  for  the  professions  but  for  a  general  educa- 
tion as  a  preparation  for  later  life  in  the  business  world.  An  acute  observer 


78  Reader 

reared  in  another  culture  might  have  seen  at  the  turn  of  the  century  that 
American  educational  policy  was  steering  American  educational  philosophy 
toward  an  ugly  problem.  As  long  as  education  beyond  the  high  school  was 
a  matter  for  a  very  small  fraction  of  the  population  and,  except  for  learned 
and  literary  men,  of  no  great  moment  in  terms  of  subsequent  success,  it 
mattered  little  who  went  to  college.  But  as  more  and  more  doors  of  oppor- 
tunity in  an  increasingly  industrialized  society  became  closed  to  the  non- 
college  man,  the  question  of  who  went  to  college  raised  new  social  and 
political  problems.  Today  we  are  faced  with  the  awkward  questions 
raised  in  the  beginning  of  this  chapter:  Have  we  real  equality  of  educa- 
tional opportunity  at  the  college  level?  If  not,  what  is  the  proper  remedy? 
Is  everyone  to  go  to  college? 

Of  one  thing  we  can  be  sure  —  not  everyone  should  have  a  professional 
training,  even  using  this  word  in  the  broad  American  sense.  This  proposi- 
tion requires  no  documentation.  A  second  premise,  almost  equally  obvious 
to  those  who  are  convinced  of  the  validity  of  our  American  ideals,  is  that 
those  who  do  obtain  a  professional  education  should  be  chosen  on  the  basis 
of  pure  merit.  This  follows  as  a  consequence  of  the  doctrine  of  equality 
of  educational  opportunity  which  has  been  emphasized  so  frequently 
throughout  this  book.  But  it  may  be  supported  on  entirely  different  grounds 
on  the  basis  of  the  welfare  of  the  nation.  A  modern  industrialized,  highly 
urbanized  country  can  prosper  only  if  the  professions  are  full  of  capable, 
imaginative,  and  forward-looking  men.  We  must  have  extremely  able 
lawyers,  doctors,  teachers,  scientists,  and  public  servants.  There  is  no  place 
for  nepotism  in  the  recruitment  of  this  corps  of  specialists.  To  the  extent 
that  we  now  fail  to  educate  the  potential  talent  of  each  generation,  we  are 
wasting  one  of  the  country's  greatest  assets.  In  the  world  today  a  highly 
industrialized  nation  simply  cannot  afford  this  type  of  waste.  Yet  no  one 
familiar  with  the  situation  would  deny  that  such  a  waste  occurs. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  America  had  remade  the  university  and  expanded 
the  facilities  for  university  students  several  fold,  before  the  war  there  were 
many  able  youths  for  whom  the  professional  world  was  barred.  Evidence 
on  this  point  has  already  been  presented  in  Chapter  3,  and  it  need  not  be 
repeated  here.  In  the  immediate  postwar  years,  1946-1948,  thanks  to  the 
G.  I.  Bill,  the  universities  and  colleges  have  been  crowded,  and  because  of 
the  large  amount  of  Federal  money  expended,  it  is  true  that  any  adequately 
prepared  veteran  who  wants  a  college  education  can  obtain  it.  But  when 
this  war  generation  has  been  educated,  what  is  then  to  come?  Shall  we 
revert  to  the  prewar  situation?  Can  we  afford  to  do  so  either  in  terms  of 
our  ideals  or  our  need  for  talent? 

We  must  remember  that  as  matters  stand  today  the  opportunities  for 
professional  education  at  low  cost  are  very  unequally  and  unfairly  dis- 
tributed in  the  United  States.  As  was  pointed  out  earlier,  the  urban  family 
with  a  low  income  is  in  a  relatively  favored  position  since  every  city  of  any 
size  has  one  or  more  universities  (often  tuition  free).  By  living  at  home 


Readers  and  College  Life  79 

the  student  can  receive  professional  training  with  only  a  small  outlay  in 
cash.  On  the  other  hand,  those  who  grow  up  in  smaller  cities,  towns,  and 
rural  areas  are  with  rare  exceptions  beyond  commuting  distance  to  a  uni- 
versity. For  these  young  men  and  women,  to  attend  an  academic  institution 
which  gives  professional  training  means  living  away  from  home  with  a 
consequent  high  expense.  Clearly  scholarships,  loan  funds,  and  opportuni- 
ties for  part-time  work  are  the  methods  by  which  youths  from  rural  areas 
must  surmount  the  economic  barriers  which  bar  the  road  to  the  professions. 

Since  the  major  cost  of  advanced  education,  if  the  student  is  away  from 
home,  is  board  and  lodging,  one  can  argue  that  as  far  as  possible  the  expan- 
sion of  public  education  beyond  high  school  should  be  arranged  locally. 
Otherwise  in  order  to  offer  equal  opportunities  we  should  have  to  envisage 
using  public  funds  to  provide  years  of  free  board  and  room  for  a  consider- 
able fraction  of  our  high  school  graduates.  But  there  are  various  types  of 
professional  and  vocational  education  which  can  be  given  at  only  a  few 
centers  in  even  a  very  populous  state.  It  is  literally  impossible,  for  example, 
to  give  adequate  instruction  in  clinical  medicine  except  in  cities  of  sufficient 
size  to  support  large  hospitals.  Similarly,  advanced  work  in  the  arts, 
sciences,  and  letters  can  be  done  only  where  adequate  libraries  and  labora- 
tories are  at  hand.  It  is  clearly  in  the  national  interest  to  find  all  the  latent 
talent  available  for  the  lengthy  training  that  research  careers  demand.  Yet 
to  establish  research  centers  at  every  point  in  the  United  States  where  gen- 
eral education  beyond  the  high  school  is  desired  would  be  not  merely 
uneconomical,  but  impossible.  The  alternative,  to  strengthen  our  present 
universities  and  establish  a  national  system  of  scholarships,  seems  the  only 
answer.  The  way  this  might  be  done  and  how  it  might  be  financed  will  be 
the  subject  of  the  next  chapter. 

I  venture  to  conclude  this  discussion  of  the  universities  by  returning  to 
my  original  proposition:  the  health  of  our  universities  depends  on  keeping 
a  balance  between  the  advancement  of  knowledge,  professional  education, 
general  education,  and  the  demands  of  student  life.  From  time  to  time, 
every  institution  will  be  threatened  by  the  overgrowth  of  one  of  these  four 
elements  or  the  atrophy  of  one  or  more.  But  by  and  large  it  seems  clear 
that  in  the  next  few  years  it  is  the  advancement  of  knowledge  which  will  be 
in  need  of  the  greatest  encouragement  and  support.  I  say  this  in  spite  of 
the  present  public  concern  with  supporting  research  in  the  physical  and 
biological  sciences.  I  say  it  in  part  because  of  this  concern.  I  am  afraid 
that  there  will  be  so  many  research  institutes  founded  by  industry  and 
philanthropy  for  very  specific  purposes  that  the  university  faculties  will  be 
drained  dry  of  their  productive  men.  Few  laymen  seem  to  realize  the  simple 
fact  that  it  is  men  that  count,  and  that  first-rate  investigators  and  original 
scholars  are  relatively  rare  phenomena  and  require  long  and  careful  train- 
ing. That  is  why,  to  me,  the  spending  of  the  taxpayers'  money  on  a  scholar- 
ship policy  is  fully  as  important  as  the  establishment  of  a  National  Science 
Foundation  to  support  basic  research  in  our  universities* 


The  Bells  Rang  Every  Hour 

John  !Ho/mes 


Looking  backward  upon  his  college  days,  Holmes  tries  to  evoke  the 
feeling  of  what  college  was  like  and  what  its  experiences  meant  to  him. 
Contrast  his  celebration  of  the  enriching  personal  values  of  college  life 
with  Benchley's  humorous  exposure  of  its  poverty  of  significant  mean- 
ing, and  also  with  Shapiro's  indictment  of  its  spiritual  bankruptcy.  Re- 
member that  each  of  the  writers  is  limiting  himself  to  effective  literary 
expression  of  a  single  attitude  among  the  many  possible  ones. 

THE  BELLS  RANG  every  hour  from  the  tower  in  the  trees 
In  the  springtime  every  day.  A  bell  said,  Go, 
And  we  went,  from  gym  to  Greek  to  chlorophyll, 
To  coffee  at  ten  in  the  morning,  back  to  the  Bible, 
And  met  the  girls  we  were  in  love  with,  after  class. 

We  had  been  fourteen  when  the  War  was  over,  too  young 
For  that  one;  then,  as  it  happened,  too  old  for  the  next. 
We  were  graduated  in  nineteen-twenty-nine,  a  year, 
We  were  told  at  Commencement,  great,  the  greatest, 
Opening  out  like  a  broad  road  up  the  map 
From  youth  to  yonder,  to  heaven,  to  anywhere. 

We  shall  never  know  so  much  as  long  as  we  live 
About  God  or  verbs  again,  or  be  so  in  love. 
Here  it  is:  bells,  books,  coffee,  evenings  in  spring. 
Here's  the  night  we  walked.    Streetlights.    Leaves  in  rain. 
We  made  notes.  We  were  very  good  at  making  notes 
On  what  the  professor  thought  we  thought  he  said, 
And  at  gazing  at  him  and  thinking  of  something  else, 
Poems,  maybe  ...  or  maybe  last  night  ...  or  something. 
Not  Sacco  and  not  Vanzetti,  in  the  papers  then. 
We  were  very  important,  were  very  busy,  expected 
At  all  the  dances,  and  always  seen  there  dancing. 
We  spoke  our  mind  in  print,  in  the  college  weekly, 
Definitely  against  the  examination  system. 

The  bells  rang  every  hour  from  the  tower  in  the  trees. 
What  was  it  going  to  be  like,  we  had  asked  ourselves? 

Everyone  reading,  we  thought.   The  books!  The  books! 
Not  drudgery,  but  all  blown  in  a  new  exciting  light, 

Reprinted  from  Map  of  My  Country  (New  York:  Duell,  Sloan  &  Pearce,  1943).  Copy- 
right  by  John  Holmes. 


Readers  and  College  Life  81 

Fiercely,  and  not  indoors,  but  everywhere, 

Walking,  working,  talking  everywhere  about  new  ideas. 

College  is  a  place  where  no  one  reads  the  papers. 

College  is  a  long  four  years  that  will  never  end. 

But  the  secret  of  civilization  was  ours  to  ask  for: 

A  magic:  kneel  in  the  classroom,  rise,  and  know  all. 

The  thing  for  the  map  is  the  thick  crowd  of  names, 

Not  of  heroes  or  readers,  but  names  of  those  who  were  there, 

Assigned  to  our  dormitories  by  the  registrar, 

Chosen  by  upperclassmen  to  join  our  clubs, 

Beside  us  in  lectures  because  of  the  alphabet, 

Therefore  our  friends. 

Only  the  careless  and  hard, 

The  gay,  the  stubborn,  the  wild  self -powered,  were  worth  it, 
And  most  of  them  never  obeyed  or  heard  the  bells 
In  the  stone  tower,  at  twenty  minutes  past  the  hour. 

Their  hour  was  midnight,  or  after,  reading  aloud, 

Talking,  eating,  listening  to  Bach  and  to  Beethoven, 

Drinking  coffee,  laughing,  talking,  reading  aloud, 

Working  their  way  to  France  on  a  freighter,  and  home, 

Crazy  and  glorious,  poor,  always  poor,  and  talking. 

Maybe  the  secret  of  civilization  was  this,  off-campus, 

Proving  that  Dante  is  best  if  read  in  Italian, 

And  somebody's  new  album  of  Brahms'  First  Symphony; 

Witty  and  careless,  with  coffee  and  more  music,  and  midnight. 

In  the  morning  the  President,  by  special  appointment, 
Would  see  the  editor,  campus  figure,  and  sleepy. 
If  only  he  could  be  told  about  Brahms,  and  Italian, 
And  coffee  and  civilization  and  books  and  no  money. 
And  he  could  have  been  told,  but  I  couldn't  tell  him. 
I  couldn't  tell  him,  and  now  I  can't  tell  even  myself. 
I  can't  call  back  what  it  was  I  wanted  to  say. 
And  what  if  he'd  asked  me  how  I  liked  the  college? 

It  was  not  what  we  thought.  Better?  Well,  different. 

Duller?  No.  Different,  not  what  we  thought.  Worth  it? 

Yes,  worth  it.  But  not  for  the  reasons  they  told  us.  Then  what? 

For  the  people.  For  the  professor  of  chemistry  I  hated, 
Who  knew  it,  and  showed  me  his  dearest  research,  as  if 
Two  artists  consulted,  so  shouldering  me  toward  my  art; 
For  the  professor  whose  B  was  precious,  as  some  A's  were  not; 


82  Reader 

For  Tommy,  for  Peg,  for  Larry,  for  Chan,  for  Duke; 
And  for  the  letter-carrier,  and  the  night  watchmen. 

Tha  seeing  so  many  people,  and  naming  them  every  day. 
For  the  people;  the  place;  the  times  hung  in  memory; 
Nights  on  the  Chapel  steps  whispering  closely,  or  not; 
The  crazy  excitement  of  May  in  our  senior  year,  — 
The  last  classes,  the  last  everything,  the  remembering 
Supper  hours  warm  and  noisy  at  the  fraternity  house, 
The  tired  silence  when  at  last  the  presses  were  running 
Too  loud  for  talk  when  the  college  paper  was  yours 
And  you  knew  every  word  in  type  in  the  forms  by  heart. 
O  God,  you  say,  that  was  all  good,  and  it  was  good. 

Then  they  all  come  in  a  whirl  of  mornings  and  faces, 
Too  many  men  and  women,  a  photograph-album  world. 
Here's  the  spring  night  we  walked  in,  after  the  movies, 
Here's  Braker  Hall,  I  think  this  was  our  junior  year. 
The  book  riffles.   There's  Gene  remember  Gene  Goss  he 
Played  the  banjo  he  died  there's  Henry  remember  Henry 
Thompson  he  died  look  there's  what  was  her  name  look 
Mark's  married  who's  that  Jim  I  saw  Jim  the  other  day 
He  asked  for  you  who's-that-who's-Dave-there's-Joe- 
Where's-Joe-he-used-to-be-very-funny-shut-the-book. 

Shut  the  book.   It's  a  good  book.   But  a  long  time  ago. 


University 

*Karl  Shapiro  •  1913- 

In  a  quite  different  tone  from  Holmes,  Karl  Shapiro,  a  leading  con- 
temporary poet,  indicts  the  university  for  its  institutional  denial  of  the 
democratic  values  envisioned  by  Jefferson  (to  whom  allusion  is  made  in 
the  last  stanza  as  founder  of  the  University  of  Virginia),  and  cham- 
pioned by  Mrs.  Frank  and  President  Conant  in  their  essays  above. 

TO^HURJ  the^fegro^and  avoid  the  Jew 
Is  the  cun^ujum.  In  mid-September 
The  jenterin£  boys,  identified  by  hats, 
Wander  in  a  maze  of  mannered  brick 

Karl  Shapiro,  Person,  Place  and  Thing.   Reprinted  by  permission  of  Random  House, 
Inc.   Copyright,  1940,  by  Karl  Shapiro. 


Readers  and  College  Life  83 

Where  boxwood  and  magnolia  brood 
And  columns  with  imperious  stance 
Like  rows  of  ante-bellum  girls 
Eye  them,  outlanders. 

In  whited  cells,  on  lawns  equipped  for  peace, 

Under  the  arch,  and  lofty  banister, 

Equals  shake  hands,  unequals  blankly  pass; 

The  exemplary  weather  whispers,  "Quiet,  quiet," 

And  visitors  on  tiptoe  leave 

For  the  raw  North,  the  unfinished  West 

As  the  young,  detecting  an  advantage, 
Practice  a  face. 

Where,  on  their  separate  hill,  the  colleges, 
Like  manor  houses  of  an  older  law, 
Gaze  down  embankments  on  a  land  in  fee, 
The  Deans,  dry  spinsters  over  family  plate, 

Ring  out  the  English  name  like  coin, 

Humor  the  snob  and  lure  the  lout. 

Within  the  precincts  of  this  world 
Poise  is  a  club. 

But  on  the  neighboring  range,  misty  and  high, 

The  past  is  absolute;  some  luckless  race 

Dull  with  inbreeding  and  conformity 

Wears  out  its  heart,  and  comes  barefoot  and  bad 

For  charity  or  jail.   The  scholar 

Sanctions  their  obsolete  disease; 

The  gentleman  revolts  with  shame 
At  his  ancestor. 

And  the  true  nobleman,  once  a  democrat, 
Sleeps  on  his  private  mountain.   He  was  one 
Whose  thought  was  shapely  and  whose  dream  was  broad; 
This  school  he  held  his  art  and  epitaph. 

But  now  it  takes  from  him  his  name, 

Falls  open  like  a  dishonest  look, 

And  shows  us,  rotted  and  endowed, 
Its  senile  pleasure. 


Ode  on  a  Distant  Prospect  of  Eton  College 

Thomas  Qray  •  i7i6—i77i 


Is  college,  or  should  it  be,  a  refuge  from  the  "real  world"?  Is  it  a 
cloistered,  ivied,  bell-ordered  little  world  of  unreality  where,  as  Holmes 
says,  "no  one  reads  the  papers,"  where  "regardless  [unaware]  of  their 
doom,  the  little  victims  play'?  The  eighteenth-century  poet,  Thomas 
Gray,  looks  upon  Eton  College  (actually  what  we  would  call  a  prep 
school)  from  a  distance,  and  upon  his  own  happy  days  there  from  a 
distance  in  time;  and  he  reflects  on  the  contrast  between  the  innocent 
happiness  of  the  schoolboy  world  and  the  evils  of  the  real  world  that 
lies  ahead.  He  concludes  with  the  famous  lines,  "Where  ignorance  is 
bliss,  'Tis  folly  to  be  wise."  Is  this  a  satisfactory  conclusion,  to  you? 

YE  DISTANT  spires,  ye  antique  towers, 

That  crown  the  watery  glade, 
Where  grateful  Science  still  adores 

Her  Henry's  holy  shade; 
And  ye,  that  from  the  stately  brow 
Of  Windsor's  heights  th'  expanse  below 

Of  grove,  of  lawn,  or  mead  survey, 
Whose  turf,  whose  shade,  whose  flowers  among 
Wanders  the  hoary  Thames  along 

His  silver-winding  way. 

Ah,  happy  hills!  ah,  pleasing  shadel 

Ah,  fields  beloved  in  vain! 
Where  once  my  careless  childhood  strayed, 

A  stranger  yet  to  pain! 
I  feel  the  gales  that  from  ye  blow, 
A  momentary  bliss  bestow, 

As  waving  fresh  their  gladsome  wing, 
My  weary  soul  they  seem  to  soothe, 
And,  redolent  of  joy  and  youth, 

To  breathe  a  second  spring. 

Say,  Father  Thames,  for  thou  hast  seen 

Full  many  a  sprightly  race 
Disporting  on  thy  margent  green 

The  paths  of  pleasure  trace, 
Who  foremost  now  delight  to  cleave 
With  pliant  arm  thy  glassy  wave? 
The  captive  linnet  which  enthrall? 
What  idle  progeny  succeed 


Readers  and  College  Life  85 

To  chase  the  rolling  circle's  speed, 
Or  urge  the  flying  ball? 

While  some  on  earnest  business  bent 

Their  murmuring  labours  ply 
'Gainst  graver  hours,  that  bring  constraint 

To  sweeten  liberty: 
Some  bold  adventurers  disdain 
The  limits  of  their  little  reign, 

And  unknown  regions  dare  descry: 
Still  as  they  run  they  look  behind, 
They  hear  a  voice  in  every  wind, 

And  snatch  a  fearful  joy. 

Gay  hope  is  theirs  by  fancy  fed, 

Less  pleasing  when  possessed; 
The  tear  forgot  as  soon  as  shed, 

The  sunshine  of  the  breast: 
Theirs  buxom  health  of  rosy  hue, 
Wild  wit,  invention  ever-new, 

And  lovely  cheer  of  vigour  born; 
The  thoughtless  day,  the  easy  night, 
The  spirits  pure,  the  slumbers  light, 

That  fly  th'  approach  of  morn. 

Alas!  regardless  of  their  doom, 

The  little  victims  play; 
No  sense  have  they  of  ills  to  come, 

Nor  care  beyond  to-day: 
Yet  see  how  all  around  'em  wait 
The  ministers  of  human  fate, 

And  black  Misfortune's  baleful  train! 
Ah,  shew  them  where  in  ambush  stand 
To  seize  their  prey  the  murderous  band! 

Ah,  tell  them,  they  are  men! 

These  shall  the  fury  Passions  tear, 

The  vultures  of  the  mind, 
Disdainful  Anger,  pallid  Fear, 

And  Shame  that  skulks  behind; 
Or  pining  Love  shall  waste  their  youth, 
Or  Jealousy  with  rankling  tooth, 

That  inly  gnaws  the  secret  heart, 
And  Envy  wan,  and  faded  Care, 
Grim-visaged  comfortless  Despair, 

And  Sorrow's  piercing  dart 


86  Reader 


Ambition  this  shall  tempt  to  rise, 

Then  whirl  the  wretch  from  high, 
To  bitter  Scorn  a  sacrifice, 

And  grinning  Infamy. 
The  stings  of  Falsehood  those  shall  try, 
And  hard  Unkindness'  altered  eye, 

That  mocks  the  tear  it  forced  to  flow; 
And  keen  Remorse  with  blood  defiled, 
And  moody  Madness  laughing  wild 

Amid  severest  woe. 

Lo,  in  the  vale  of  years  beneath 

A  grisly  troop  are  seen, 
The  painful  family  of  Death, 

More  hideous  than  their  Queen: 
This  racks  the  joints,  this  fires  the  veins, 
That  every  labouring  sinew  strains, 

Those  in  the  deeper  vitals  rage: 
Lo,  Poverty,  to  fill  the  band, 
That  numbs  the  soul  with  icy  hand, 

And  slow-consuming  Age. 

To  each  his  sufferings;  all  are  men, 

Condemned  alike  to  groan, 
The  tender  for  another's  pain; 

The  unfeeling  for  his  own. 
Yet,  ah!  why  should  they  know  their  fate, 
Since  sorrow  never  comes  too  late, 

And  happiness  too  swiftly  flies? 
Thought  would  destroy  their  paradise. 
No  more;  where  ignorance  is  bliss, 

Tis  folly  to  be  wise. 


Part     j^Tl      Two 


WRITER 


EXCEPT  under  rare  conditions  of  shyness  or  stress,  few  people  are  tongue- 
tied.  But  nearly  all  of  us  are  pen-tied  when  faced  with  the  painful  neces- 
sity to  write  a  theme,  an  essay,  or  an  examination.  Paper  and  pen  mysteri- 
ously dry  up  the  stream  of  thought  and  the  easy  flow  of  words,  and  what 
finally  squeezes  out  is  likely  to  be  no  more  like  us  than  a  bad  snapshot  or 
a  reflection  in  a  warped  mirror. 

How  can  we  account  for  this  strange  difference  between  writing  and 
ordinary  speech?  One  reason  is  that  we  talk  far  more  than  we  write. 
Another  is  that  writing  is  a  kind  of  full-dress  performance  —  we  have  to 
be  on  our  best  behavior  as  we  seldom  do  in  conversation.  An  even  subtler 
reason  is  that  we  are  deeply  convinced  that  writing  is  something  special. 
The  same  words  won't  do;  our  thoughts  have  to  be  organized,  our  sen- 
tences correct;  we  have  to  have  an  introduction,  a  conclusion,  well-rounded 
paragraphs,  and  topic  sentences. 

Of  course  all  this  is  true,  to  some  extent.  Most  of  your  writing  —  the 
writing  you  do  for  your  classes,  at  any  rate  —  is  more  formal  than  talk,  re- 
quires more  orderly  development  and  more  careful  planning  before  the 
actual  writing  is  even  begun.  But  there  are  more  similarities  between  writ- 
ing and  talk  than  we  are  likely  to  realize,  and  recognizing  these  similarities 
can  help  you  break  through  the  barrier  which  the  act  of  writing  so  often 
imposes.  Whether  you  talk  or  write,  you  are  you  —  an  individual  human 
being,  unique  in  all  the  world.  And  you  are  trying  to  establish  communi- 


88  Writer 

cation  with  other  human  beings.  You  have  things  to  say  (many  more  than 
you  probably  yet  realize)  that  will  be  of  interest  to  others,  and  you  can 
interest  them  best  by  being  your  honest  and  natural  unassuming  self.  Most 
of  the  words  you  write  are  the  words  you  speak,  and  if  you  try  sincerely 
to  be  yourself  as  you  write,  your  words  will  have  the  natural  ring  of  your 
voice  in  them,  and  the  rhythms  of  your  speech.  For  good  writing,  by  all 
modern  standards,  is  natural  writing. 

Good  writing  is  something  else:  it  is  packed;  it  is  continually  saying 
something.  Every  sentence  and  every  word  adds  to  the  thought  and  the 
experience.  And  much  thought  goes  into  it  which  does  not  necessarily 
appear  on  the  surface  —  like  an  iceberg,  which  is  nine-tenths  out  of  view. 


The  Writer's  Job 


"But  you  can't  -write  a  theme 
in  twenty  minutes!" 


Anybody  Can  Learn  to  Write    *F 

Stephen  Leacock  •  i869-i944 


What's  likely  to  bother  you  as  you  begin  writing  in  college  is  the 
twofold  problem;  what  to  say,  how  to  say  it.  You  may  think  you  have 
nothing  to  say,  no  information,  no  ideas,  nothing  worth  mentioning; 
and  you  probably  suppose  you  must  write  in  a  quite  different  way  than 
you  would  ordinarily  speak.  The  thing  college  students  somehow  find 
hardest  to  learn  is  to  be  themselves  in  writing,  to  discover  the  endless 
wealth  of  idea  and  experience  they  have  already  accumulated,  and  to 
set  it  forth  in  a  natural  and  straightforward  way.  Leacock  says:  Don't 
think  your  knowledge,  your  interests,  your  experiences,  your  ideas,  can't 
be  any  good  because  they're  merely  yours,  and  don't  be  afraid  to  put 
them  into  your  own  familiar  words.  If  you  learn  this  much  in  your 
whole  freshman  writing  course,  you  will  have  learned  the  most  im- 
portant lesson  of  all  about  writing. 


WE  HAVE  DEOD^thenJ^al^wiJting  hafi  gyt  to  hft. 

can  t  wait  for  it  to  come.   On  these  terms,  I  claim  that  anybody  can  learn 

to  write,  just  as  anybody  can  learn  to  swim.  Nor  can  anybody  swim  with- 

Reprinted  by  permission  of  Dodd,  Mead  &  Company  from  How  to  Write  by  Stephen 
Leacock.  Copyright,  1943,  by  Dodd,  Mead  &  Company,  Inc. 

89 


90  Writer 

out  learning  how.  A  person  can  thus  learn  to  swim  up  to  the  limits  im- 
posed by  his  aptitude  and  physique.  The  final  result  may  not  be  worth 
looking  at,  but  he  can  swim.  So  with  writing.  Nobody  can  learn  to  write 
without  having  learned  how,  either  consciouslf^br  unconsciously.  But  it 
fortunately  happenrthat  what  we  call  our  education  supplies  to  all  of  us 
the  first  basis  for  writing,  the  ability  to  read  and  to  spell.  Indeed  our 
ordinary  education,  even  in  any  elementary  school,  gives  us  a  certain 
training  in  putting  words  together.  Under  the  name  of  "composition"  we 
go  through  a  harrowing  set  of  little  exercises  in  correcting  errors  in  the  use 
of  English;  we  put  poetry  back  into  prose,  and  go  as  far  as  to  reach  up  to 
writing  a  composition  on  An  Autumn  Walk,  or  The  Fidelity  of  the  Dog. 
This  is  not  "writing"  in  the  sense  adopted  in  this  book  but  it  is  as  essential 
a  preliminary  to  it  as  learning  to  drive  a  nail  into  a  board  is  to  carpentry. 
People  of  exceptional  native  ability  and  no  schooling  sometimes  write,  and 
sometimes  have  reached  great  eminence  without  such  training.  But  that  is 
because  the  bent  of  their  minds  was  so  strong  in  that  direction  that  un- 
consciously they  weighed  and  measured  words  and  phrases,  fascinated  with 
the  power  of  expression,  as  an  artistic  genius,  a  young  Giotto,  with  the 
pictured  line. 

Indeed,  an  ordinary  environment  of  today  gives  us  an  even  further 
start,  and  nowadays  our  sight  and  hearing,  through  moving  pictures,  in- 
troduces us  to  a  vast  world  of  history,  of  actual  events,  and  imaginary 
stories.  These  and  the  little  circumstances  of  our  own  life  give  us  plenty  of 
material  for  thought.  If  we  put  our  thoughts  into  words  and  write  them 
down,  that  is  writing.  There's  no  more  to  it.  It's  just  as  simple  as  that. 

In  bffieFwoFdsr,  anybody  can  write  who  has  something  to  say  and  knows 
how  to  say  it.  Contrariwise,  nobody  can  write  who  has  nothing  to  say,  or 
nothing  that  he  can  put  into  words. 

NOW  it  so  happens  that  most  of  us  have  a  good  deal  to  say,  but  when  we 
try  to  turn  it  into  writing  it  gets  muddled  up  by  all  kinds  of  preconceived 
ideasjrf  how  writing  should  be  done,  or  is  done  by  other  people.  So  much 
so  that  when  we  write  anything  down  it  sounds  false  from  start  to  finish. 
Each  one  of  us  is  the  custodian  of  one  first  class  story,  the  story  of  his  own 
life.  Every  human  life  is  a  story  —  is  interesting  if  it  can  be  conveyed. 
The  poet  Gray  wrote  down  the  "short  and  simple  annals  of  the  poor" 
sleeping  under  the  elm  trees  of  a  country  churchyard,  with  such  pathos 
and  interest  that  they  have  lasted  nearly  two  hundred  years.  But  the  poor 
couldn't  have  done  it  for  themselves.  Neither  can  we.  We  can't  surround 
the  story  of  our  life  with  the  majestic  diction  and  the  music  of  Gray's 
Elegy.  But  it  is  interesting,  just  the  same,  if  we  can  tell  it.  Have  you 
never  noticed  how  at  times  people  begin  to  tell  you  of  their  early  life  and 
early  difficulties,  and  tell  it  utterly  without  affectation  or  effort,  and  how 
interesting  it  is  in  such  form?  Like  this: 

Our  farm  was  fifteen  miles  from  a  high  school  and  it  was  too  far  to  walk, 
and  I  didn't  see  how  I  could  manage  to  go,  and  I  couldnt  have,  but  Uncle 


The  Writers  Job  91 

Al  (he  was  the  one  who  had  gone  out  West)  heard  about  it  and  he  sent  me 
fifty  dollars  and  I  started.  I  boarded  Monday  to  Friday  and  walked  home 
Fridays  after  school  .  .  .  and  so  forth. 

That's  the  way  the  man  talks  in  an  unguarded  moment.  But  set  him 
down  to  write  out  his  life  and  see  what  happens.  Either  he  sits  and  chews 
his  pen  and  can't  start,  or  he  writes  —  with  the  result  a  hopeless  artificiality. 
The  same  facts  are  there  but  dressed  with  a  false  adornment  like  ribbons 
on  a  beggar's  coat.  Something  like  this:  Our  farni  was  situated  some  ten 
miles  from  the  nearest  emporium  of  learning,  to  wit,  a  high  school,  a  dis- 
tance beyond  the  range  of  Shank's  mare,  the  only  vehicle  within  reach  of 
my,  or  my  family's,  pecuniary  resources  .  .  .  etc.,  etc. 

This  failure  happens  because  the  man  in  question  has  been,  unknow- 
ingly, taught  how  not  to  write.  The  necessarily  somewhat  artificial  train- 
ing of  the  school-room  has  led  him  unconsciously  to  think  of  writing  as 
something  elevated  above  ordinary  speaking--^ :Iike "company  manners^ 
ThisTnbcks  ouFaTonce-the  peculiar  quality  of  "sincerity**  whiclils~the  very 
soul  of  literature.  "Sincerity"  is  the  nearest  word  for  what  is  meant;  it  im- 
plies not  exactly  honesty  but  a  direct  relation,  a  sort  of  inevitable  relation 
as  between  the  words  used  and  the  things  narrated.  This  is  the  peculiar 
quality  of  many  of  the  great  writers  who  wrote  without  trying  to  write. 
Caesar  wrote  like  this  and  John  Bunyan,  and  better  than  all  as  an  example 
is  the  matchless,  simple  Greek  of  the  New  Testament  as  put  before  us  by 
King  James's  translators  .  .  .  They  were  all  with  one  accord  in  one  place  .  .  . 
and  suddenly  there  came  the  sound  as  of  a  rushing  mighty  wind.  Or  again: 
And  they  said  "Behold!  There  is  a  lad  here  that  hath  five  barley  loaves  and 
three  small  fishes,  but  what  are  they  among  so  many?9'  And  he  said,  "Make 
the  men  sit  down"  And  the  men  sat  down,  in  number  about  five  thousand. 
And  there  was  much  grass  in  the  place  .  .  . 

Now  we  can  see  from  this  the  difficulty  so  many  young  people  find  when 
they  try  to  "practise"  writing.  They  are  suddenly  attempting  to  be  someone 
else.  Thus  it  crften  happens  that  when  the  conscious  age  of  trying  to  write 
begmsT  young  people  use^  their  correspondence  with  their  friends  as  a  form 
of  practise.  Ebenezer  Smith,  let  us  say,  writes  from  Temagami  camp  a 
letter  to  a  friend.  Hitherto  he  had  just  written  letters  straight  off,  after  this 
fashion:  We  got  the  canoes  into  the  water  about  five  o'clock,  just  after  the 
sun  rose.  The  lake  was  dead  calm  and  we  paddled  down  to  the  portage  in 
half  an  hour.  I  never  saw  the  lake  so  calm.  But  suddenly  Ebenezer  be- 
comes sophisticated  and  when  he  sits  down  to  write,  the  result  is  such  a 
passage  as  this: 

A  clear  morning  with  just  a  faint  sheen  of  mist  before  the  sun  kissed  it 
away.  I  watched  it  vanish  from  the  still  surface  of  the  lake  and  thought  it 
seemed  like  some  thin  cerement,  reverently  drawn  from  the  still  face  of 
death.  Oh,  no,  you  didn't,  Ebenezerl  You  thought  that  afterwards;  stick 
to  the  canoe  and  portage  stuff.  It's  more  like  Xenophon. 

This  collapse  of  Ebenezer  Smith's  correspondence  as  a  method  of  begin- 


92  Writer 

ning  to  write,  leaves  us  sfcUl  with  the  problem,  how  do  you^  begin  anyway? 
Where  do  you  get  the  &$£££.  and  the  (practise  9  ^ 

We  have  just  said  that  the  ordinary7  Education  of  the  great  mass  of 
people,  who  go  to  school  but  don't  go  to  college,  supplies  them  with  at 
least  a  sort  of  elementary  beginning  in  "composition,"  in  the  expression  of 
thought  in  words.  What?  they  get  is  at  least  something;  indeed  it  is  much. 
But  it  is  maijUy negative/.  It  says  whatnot  to  do.  It  tells  them  what  errors 
to^avoid.  But  you  can't  avoid  anything  if  you  are  writing  nothing.  You 
must  write  first  and  "avqfid"  afterwards.  A  writer  is  in  no  danger  of  splitting 
an  infinitive  if  he  has  no  infinitive  to  split. 

It  might,  therefore,  be  thought  that  in  order  to  become  a  writer  it  is 
necessary  to  go  on  from  school  to  college,  and  learn  the  "real  stuff."  For- 
tunately for  the  world  at  large  this  is  not  true.  To  go  to  college  may  be 
helpful  but  it  is  certainly  not  necessary.  Writing  is  a  thing  which,  sooner 
or  later,  one  must  do  for  oneself,  of  one's  own  initiative  and  energy.  Those 
who  are  debarred  from  the  privilege  of  attending  college  may  take  courage. 
The  college  kills  writers  as  well  as  makes  them.  It  is  true  that  a  gifted 
professor  can  do  a  lot;  he  can  show  the  way,  can  explain  what  are  the 
things  in  literature  that  the  world  has  found  great  and  why,  in  his  opinion, 
they  are  so.  Better  still,  he  can  communicate  his  own  enthusiasm,  and 
even  exalt  his  pupils  on  the  wings  of  his  own  conceit.  More  than  that,  the 
college  gives  companionship  in  study;  it  is  hard  to  work  alone,  harder  still 
to  enjoy.  Appreciation  grows  the  more  it  is  divided. 

But  as  against  all  that,  college  training  carries  the  danger  of  standardized 
judgments,  of  affected  admiration,  of  the  pedantry  of  learning.  Students 
read  with  one  eye,  or  both,  on  the  examination,  classify  and  memorize  and 
annotate  till  they  have  exchanged  the  warm  pulsation  of  life  for  the  post- 
mortem of  an  inquest. 

43ointis  that  writing^jwhether  done  in  and  by  college  or 


^ 

witKout  a  college,  has  got  Fo'Te^Jone^for^Lnd  by  oneself .  If  you  want  to 
write,  start  and  write  ^SwnTyour  thoughts.  If  you  haven't  any  thoughts, 
don't  writeTHem  down.  But  if  you  have,  write  them  down;  thoughts  about 
anything,  no  matter  what,  in  your  own  way,  with  no  idea  of  selling  them 
or  being  an  author.  Just  put  down  your  thoughts.  If  later  on  it  turns  out 
that  your  thoughts  are  interesting  and^jf  _youget  enpughpractise  to  be 
able  to  set  down  what  they  really  are  in  languageH0hSfconveys  them 
properly  —  the  selling  business  comes  itself.  There  are  many  things  in 
life,  as  we  have  said,  that  come  to  us  as  it  were  "at  back  rounds."  Look  for 
happiness  and  you  find  dust.  Look  for  "authorship"  and  you  won't  find  it; 
look  for  self-expression  in  words,  for  its  own  sake,  and  an  editor's  check 
will  rustle  down  from  Heaven  on  your  table.  Of  course  you  really  hoped 
for  it;  but  you  won't  get  it  unless  and  until  self-expression  for  its  own  sake 
breaks  through. 

What  doj^oii  write  about?  You  write  about  anything.   Your  great  dif- 
as  you  apprehend  this  method,  that  you  can  think 


The  Writers  Job  93 

things  but  can't  say  them.    Most  people  live  and  die  in  that  state;  their 
conversation  is  stuffed  with  smothered  thoughtjthat  can't  get  over. 

Take  an  example:  Two  people  are  walking  out  with  the  crowd  from  the 
roar  and  racket  of  a  football  game,  just  over.  One  says,  "I  don't  know  that 
I  quite  believe  in  all  that  rooting  stuff,  eh?"  And  the  other  answers,  re-' 
flectively,  "Oh,  I  don't  know;  I'm  not  so  sure."  That's  as  far  as  they  can 
get.  What  the  first  man  means  is  that  organized  hysteria  is  a  poor  substi- 
tute for  spontaneous  enthusiasm;  and  what  the  other  means  is  that  after 
all  even  genuine  enthusiasm  unless  organized,  unless  given  the  aid  of 
regularity  and  system  —  even  spontaneous  enthusiasm  degenerates  into 
confusion;  our  life,  itself  artificial,  compels  a  certain  "organization."  They 
can't  say  this,  but  either  of  these  two  spectators  would  read  with  pleasure 
a  well-written  magazine  article  under  such  a  title  as  Should  Rooting  Be 
Rooted  Out? 


The  Psychology  of  Effective 

Writing     »*  Jf.  A.  Overstreet  •  i875- 


The  all-important  discovery  about  writing  is  that  you  do  have  some- 
thing, many  things,  to  say.  Actually,  when  you  say  something,  aloud  or 
on  paper,  you  almost  always  say  it  in  such  a  way  that  people  grasp 
your  bare  meaning.  But  they  may  not  believe  it,  they  may  not  think 
it  is  important  or  interesting,  they  may  not  take  it  as  you  wish  it  to  be 
taken.  Oyerstreet  bids  you  to  remember  your  reader  —  that  you  are 

purpose  6Faffeci:7hg~lnnT  in  a  certain 


wav_.   The  "rules"  of  rhetoric,  that  is  of  effective  composition,  are  easy 
to  understand  if  you  think  of  them  in  this  way. 


THERE  ARE  MANY  excellent  books  on  the  art  of  writing;/  buy  they  approach 
their  subject  chiefly  from  a  literary  point  of  view.  One  finds  among  them 
scarcely  any  consideration  —  certainly  no  systematic  one  —  of  the  psycho- 
logical  aspectj^f_wjtting.  Grammar,  sentence  and  paragraph  structure, 
logical  sequence,  proportion,  metaphors,  similes,  etc.  All  of  these  are  im- 
portant; nay,  the  knowledge  of  them  is  quite  indispensable.  Writing,  how- 
ever, like  speaking,  is  something  more  than  a  mechanics  of  word-combina- 
tion. It  is^ssentiaJKji  a  psychologica^enterprise.  It  has  the  aimjofarousing 
the  atte^on^^d^  It  is,  in  ' 


Reprinted  from  Influencing  Human  Behavior  by  H.  A.  Overstreet.  By  permission  of 
W.  W.  Norton  &  Company,  Inc.  Copyright,  1925,  by  W.  W.  Norton  &  Company,  Inc. 
Pp.  87-95. 


<ft  Writer 

stimulus  which  seeks  to  win  favorable  response.  Now  it  is  obvious,  of 
course,  that  if  one  uses  unclear  words,  confus/ed  sentences,  and  drearily 
long  paragraphs,  no  favorable  response  is  likely  to  be  evoked.  Hence  there 
is  indispensable  value  in  training  along  these  lines.  But  it  is  a  question 
whether  expertness  in  these  literary  matters/ is  enough.  Must  "one  riot  go 
farther- and  understand  the  psychological  factors  involved  in  good  and  in 
poor  writing?  ^4  4-'  ^  *+•  U  *-  <  - 

Writing,  we  have  said,  is  a  form  of  stimulus  which  seeks  a  response. 
Good  writing  does  something  to  the  reader.  Poor  writing  does  something 
else.  What  is  it  that  good  writing  does,  and  that  poor  writing  fails  to  do? 
Most  of  us  who  write  at  all,  simply  write,  without  any  thought  of  how  cer- 
tain quite  fundamental  matters  affect  our  readers.  .  .  . 

What  makes  writing  dull?    Apparently  one  or  more  of  the  following: 

1.  Siodginess.   No  "unfamiliar  in  the  familiar."   No  phrases  that  hit  off 
the  ideas  in  ways  that  are  different.   Cliches,  platitudes,  "standard  verbal 
equipment."  ^      ""\  * 

2.  Verbosity.   Too  many  verbal  'stimuli!  for  the  required  effect,  inducing 
weariness,  tempting  us  to  skip. 

3.  Circumlocution.   The  stimulus  always  coming;  never  arriving;  hence 
the  reader  always  uncertain,  impatient,  irritated.    "Do,  in  heaven's  name, 
get  to  the  point!" 

4.  Lack  of  clearness.    Involved  phrases,  long  sentences,  ideas  badly  ar- 
ranged. The  stimulus  never  quite  clear.   The  reader  makes  no  swift  favor- 
able response,  because  he  does  not  know  what  it  is  all  about. 

5.  Lack  of  dramatic  quality.  No  "luring"  quality.   No  awakening  of  the 
reader's  curiosity.   Hence  the  reader  nods. 

6.  Abstractness.  No  vivid  pictures.  Pale.  Slips  out  of  the  mind.  Leaves 
no  impression. 

7.  Absence  of  Rhythm.    Nothing  that  "carries  on."    Jerky,  disordered, 
clumsy. 

8.  Monotony  of  Rhythm.  Movement  all  the  same.  No  variety.  .  .  . 

It  should  be  clear  that  in  the  above  we  have  been  considering  matters 
which  are  fundamentally  psychological.  When  is  writing  dull,  we  asked  — 
and .ofjcomse J^jteplificl  when  it  is  dull  to  the  reader.  When  is  it  fasci- 
nating to  the  reader?  ApparentTyTsb"^  answers  ran,  it  is  dull  or  fascinat- 
ing wheri  the  writing-stimuTiis  does  or  does  not  evoke  certain?  fundamental 
response^:ir^  the  reader.  Commonplace  phrasing,  for  example,  is  not  just  a 
literary  quality>  It  js  a^psyeholpgical  one  inasmuch  as  it  implies  no  effective 
response  to  the  ^oveltj^  wish'/  o£jthe  reader.  Verbosity,  circumlocution, 
lack  of  clearness  ara^sychological  in  that  they.  Qtpg'r  the  stimulu^.  Ab- 
stractness is_ps)^h6logical  in  that  it  places  too  great^a  tax  upon  our  es- 
sentially(concrete  Jninds.  Lack  of  dramatic  quality  is  psychological  in  that 
it  fails  to^fouse  the  reader's  "basic  interest  in  the  "chase."  And  so  on. 
Once  we  note  this,  that  the  qualifies  which  have  been  found  to  be  requisite 
in  good  writing  are  requisite  becaus^  they  are  kinds  of  stimuli  which 


The  Writer's  Job  95 

evoke  kinds  of  responses,  most  of  the  mystery  which  resides  in  the  "prin- 
ciples" of  the  art  of  writing  disappear.  The  reason,  in  short,  why  every  one 
qfjhe  above  excellent  qualities  is  excellent  is  that :  the  ~ reader  likerthem. 
There  are,  in  other  words,  no  canons  of  literary  art  which  prescribe  "them. 
They  are  prescribed,  simply  and  solely,  by  the  likes  and  dislikes  of  the 
reader. 

One  who  wishes  to  write  well,  therefore,  will  make  his  most  effective  ap- 
proach to  the  art,  not  by  asking  "What  does  the  art  of  writing  require  of 
me?"  but  rather,  "What  does  my  reader  require  of  me?" 


A  Writing  Machine    *• 

Jonathan  Swift  -  i667-i?45 


You  probably  think  of  Gulliver's  Travels  (1726)  as  a  delightful 
book  for  children,  and  so  it  is,  in  shortened  versions  that  leave  out 
much  of  its  real  meat.  Actually  it  is  a  profound  and  savage  attack  upon 
the  vices  and  follies  of  Swift's  time  and  of  human  nature  at  all  times. 
On  his  third  voyage,  to  Laputa,  a  floating  island  where  philosophers, 
scientists,  and  other  learned  men  are  pretty  much  "up  in  the  air," 
Gulliver  visits  a  laboratory  where  some  experimenters  are  carrying  on 
various  preposterous  projects.  By  these  Swift  meant  to  ridicule  con- 
temporary scientific  pursuits  which  he  thought  were  vain  and  useless, 
but  he  was  getting  at  more  fundamental  follies.  What  common  human 
shortcomings  are  illustrated  in  the  following  attempt  to  invent  a  ma- 
chine to  take  over  the  labors  of  composition? 

THE  FIRST  PROFESSOR  I  saw  was  in  a  very  large  Room,  with  forty  Pupils 
about  him.  After  Salutation,  observing  me  to  look  earnestly  upon  a  Frame, 
which  took  up  the  greatest  part  of  both  the  Length  and  Breadth  of  the 
Room,  he  said  perhaps  I  might  wonder  to  see  him  employed  in  a  Project 
for  improving  speculative  Knowledge  by  practical  and  mechanical  Opera- 
tions. But  the  World  would  soon  be  sensible  of  its  Usefulness,  and  he 
flattered  himself  that  a  more  noble  exalted  Thought  never  sprung  in  any 
other  Man's  Head.  Every  one  knew  how  laborious  the  usual  Method  is  of 
attaining  to  Arts  and  Sciences;  whereas  by  his  Contrivance,  the  most 
ignorant  Person  at  a  reasonable  Charge,  and  with  a  little  bodily  Labour, 
may  write  both  in  Philosophy,  Poetry,  Politicks,  Law,  Mathematicks  and 
Theology,  without  the  least  Assistance  from  Genius  or  Study.  He  then  led 
me  to  the  Frame,  about  the  sides  whereof  all  his  Pupils  stood  in  Ranks.  It 
was  twenty  Foot  Square,  placed  in  the  middle  of  the  Room.  The  Superficies 


96  Writer 

was  composed  of  several  bits  of  Wood,  about  the  bigness  of  a  Dye,  but 
some  larger  than  others.  They  were  all  linked  together  by  slender  Wires. 
These  bits  of  Wood  were  covered  on  every  Square  with  Paper  pasted  on 
them,  and  on  these  Papers  were  written  all  the  Words  of  their  Language 
in  their  several  Moods,  Tenses,  and  Declensions,  but  without  any  Order. 
The  Professor  then  desired  me  to  observe,  for  he  was  going  to  set  his 
Engine  at  Work.  The  Pupils  at  his  Command  took  each  of  them  hold  of  an 
Iron  Handle,  whereof  there  were  fourty  fixed  round  the  Edges  of  the 
Frame,  and  giving  them  a  sudden  turn,  the  whole  Disposition  of  the  Words 
was  entirely  changed.  He  then  commanded  six  and  thirty  of  the  Lads  to 
read  the  several  Lines  softly  as  they  appeared  upon  the  Frame;  and  where 
they  found  three  or  four  Words  together  that  might  make  part  of  a  Sen- 
tence, they  dictated  to  the  four  remaining  Boys  who  were  Scribes.  This 
Work  was  repeated  three  or  four  times,  and  at  every  turn  the  Engine  was 
so  contrived,  that  the  Words  shifted  into  new  Places,  or  the  square  bits  of 
Wood  moved  upside  down. 

Six  Hours  a-day  the  young  Students  were  employed  in  this  Labour,  and 
the  Professor  shewed  me  several  Volumes  in  large  Folio  already  collected, 
of  broken  Sentences,  which  he  intended  to  piece  together,  and  out  of  those 
rich  Materials  to  give  the  world  a  compleat  Body  of  all  Arts  and  Sciences; 
which  however  might  be  still  improved,  and  much  expedited,  if  the  Publick 
would  raise  a  Fund  for  making  and  employing  five  hundred  such  Frames 
in  Lagado,  and  oblige  the  Managers  to  contribute  in  common  their  several 
Collections. 

He  assured  me,  that  this  Invention  had  employed  all  his  Thoughts  from 
his  Youth,  that  he  had  employed  the  whole  Vocabulary  into  his  Frame, 
and  made  the  strictest  Computation  of  the  general  Proportion  there  is  in 
the  Book  between  the  Numbers  of  Particles,  Nouns,  and  Verbs,  and  other 
Parts  of  Speech. 

I  made  my  humblest  Acknowledgment  to  this  illustrious  Person  for  his 
great  Communicativeness,  and  promised  if  ever  I  had  the  good  Fortune  to 
return  to  my  Native  Country,  that  I  would  do  him  justice,  as  the  sole  In- 
ventor of  this  wonderful  Machine;  the  Form  and  Contrivance  of  which  I 
desired  leave  to  delineate  upon  Paper  as  in  the  Figure  here  annexed.  I 
told  him,  although  it  were  the  Custom  of  our  Learned  in  Europe  to  steal 
Inventions  from  each  other,  who  had  thereby  at  least  this  Advantage,  that 
it  became  a  Controversy  which  was  the  right  Owner,  yet  I  would  take  such 
Caution,  that  he  should  have  the  Honour  entire  without  a  Rival. 


Pleasant  Agony    ** 

JWason  'Brown  •  IPOO— 


Swift's  writing  machine,  in  the  passage  above,  is  one  labor-saving 
gadget  we  can  sadly  predict  will  never  be  perfected.  The  job  of  express- 
ing what  is  in  your  mind  is  your  own  job;  no  machine  can  do  it  for 
you,  and  no  nine  easy  lessons  can  make  you  a  master  at  it.  Even  for 
professionals  it  is  hard  work.  As  Brown  says  here,  the  job  is  often  an 
agony  if  you  are  taking  it  seriously;  but  it  is  a  pleasant  agony;  nothing 
can  give  you  more  satisfaction  than  struggling  with  it  successfully. 

AT  A  SEASON'S  END,  when  the  country  is  calling,  it  may  be  permissible  to 
talk  shop  before  shutting  it  up,  however  temporarily.  For  four  and  a  half 
years  now,  mine  has  been  the  privilege,  hence  the  pleasant  agony,  of  filling 
these  pages  each  week,  or  almost  every  week.  I  say  pleasant  agony  be- 
cause I  know  of  no  other  words  with  which  to  describe  what  writing  is  to 
me. 

I  claim  no  singularity  in  this.  There  may  be,  there  must  be,  writers  to 
whom  writing  comes  as  effortlessly  as  breathing.  There  may  even  be 
(though  I  doubt  it)  writers  whose  happiness  is  complete  while  they  are 
actually  writing.  But  most  of  us  who  live  by  putting  words  together  are 
not  so  fortunate.  We  are  tortured  while  we  write  and  would  be  tortured 
were  we  not  allowed  to  do  so.  Although  when  we  are  done  we  feel  "de- 
livered," as  Sainte-Beuve  put  it,  this  delirium  of  delivery  is  not  accom- 
plished without  labor  pains  for  which  medicine  has,  as  yet,  provided  no 
soothing  drugs.  If  all  attempts  to  coerce  words  into  doing  what  we  would 
have  them  do  are  at  best  painful  pleasures,  the  pains  and  pleasures  of 
summoning  the  right  words  to  meet  a  weekly  deadline  are  of  a  special 
kind. 

A  cook  faced  with  getting  dinner  when  lunch  is  over  knows  something  of 
the  routine,  if  not  all  the  anguishes,  of  a  columnist.  No  mortals,  however, 
have  appetites  as  insatiable  as  a  column's.  A  column  is  an  omnivorous 
beast.  Its  hunger  is  never  appeased.  Feed  it,  and  almost  at  once  it  de- 
mands to  be  fed  again. 

Though  he  used  a  different  image  to  express  this  same  idea,  even  Shaw, 
seemingly  the  most  easeful  of  writers,  knew  this.  When  he  abandoned  the 
job  of  drama  critic  on  London's  Saturday  Review,  he  protested  against  the 
weekly  deadlines  which  had  confronted  him  for  nearly  four  years.  He 
likened  himself  to  a  man  fighting  a  windmill.  "I  have  hardly  time,"  wrote 

From  The  Saturday  Review  of  Literature,  June  25,  1949.  By  permission  of  the  pub- 
lishers and  the  author.  Copyright  1949  by  Saturday  Review  Associates,  Inc. 

97 


98  Writer 

he,  "to  stagger  to  my  feet  from  the  knock-down  blow  of  one  sail,  when 
the  next  strikes  me  down." 

His  successor  in  the  same  job  on  that  same  fortunate  magazine  shared  an 
identical  dislike  of  deadlines.  For  twelve  years,  Max  Beerbohm  admitted 
in  his  valedictory  article,  Thursdays  had  been  for  him  the  least  pleasant 
day  of  the  week.  Why  Thursday?  Because  that  was  the  day,  the  latest  pos- 
sible one,  he  set  aside  each  week  to  get  his  writing  done.  On  every 
Wednesday,  therefore,  he  would  be  engulfed  by  "a  certain  sense  of  op- 
pression, of  misgiving,  even  of  dread."  It  was  only  on  Friday,  when  once 
the  danger  was  passed,  that  the  sun  would  shine  again.  Then  he  would 
move  on  dancing  feet. 

I  quote  my  betters  to  console  myself  by  the  reminder  that  they,  too, 
knew  the  pangs  of  weekly  columnizing.  Yet  the  consolation  I  seek  is 
denied  me  when  I  discover,  for  example,  that  it  took  Beerbohm  one,  and 
only  one,  short  day  of  pain  to  turn  out  the  delectable  copy  which  he  could 
write.  Shaw,  I  am  certain,  was  also  a  one-day  man.  I  wish  I  were.  I  wish 
even  more  ardently  that  I  could  claim  any  of  the  merits  which  glorify  their 
reviews  for  what  it  takes  me  two,  three,  or  sometimes  five  days  of  ceaseless 
sweating  to  produce  as  fodder  for  these  columns. 

Beerbohm  ascribed  his  disrelish  for  the  act  of  writing  to  "the  acute 
literary  conscience"  with  which  he  had  been  cursed.  It  was  this  con- 
science, he  maintained,  which  kept  his  pen  from  ever  running  away  with 
him.  I  know  what  he  means.  Unblessed  with  any  of  his  gifts,  I  am  none  the 
less  cursed  with  something  of  his  conscience.  Beerbohm  insisted  that  "to 
seem  to  write  with  ease  and  delight  is  one  of  the  duties  which  a  writer 
owes  to  his  readers."  If  he  worked  hard  at  his  sentences,  it  was  because 
Beerbohm  hoped  they  would  read  easily.  In  other  words,  he  was  in  com- 
plete agreement  with  Sheridan's  "easy  writing's  vile  hard  reading."  One 
statement  of  Beerbohm's  I  could  truthfully  apply  to  my  own  efforts  for  the 
SRL.  It  runs,  "I  may  often  have  failed  in  my  articles  here,  to  disguise  labor. 
But  the  effort  to  disguise  it  has  always  been  loyally  made." 

There  is  a  passage  in  "The  Goncourt  Journals"  which  has  haunted  me 
since  I  read  it.  Envy  has  kept  it  green  for  me,  and  wonder  (or  is  it  dis- 
belief?) has  kept  it  alive.  I  have  in  mind  Gautier's  boast  that  he  never 
thought  about  what  he  was  going  to  write.  "I  take  up  my  pen,"  he  ex- 
plained, "and  write.  I  am  a  man  of  letters  and  am  presumed  to  know  my 
job.  ...  I  throw  my  sentences  into  the  air  and  I  can  be  sure  that  they -will 
come  down  on  their  feet,  like  cats.  .  .  .  Look  here:  here's  my  script:  not  a 
word  blotted." 

When  I  think  of  the  one-legged  kittens  that  land  on  my  pages;  when  I 
remember  the  false  starts,  illegible  scribblings,  unfinished  sentences,  dis- 
carded drafts,  changed  constructions,  and  altered  words  which  mark  my 
beginnings,  my  continuings,  and  my  endings,  I  blush  with  shame  and,  like 
the  voyagers  in  Dante's  realm,  abandon  all  hope. 

In  these  journalistic  days  the  first  word  that  pops  into  an  author's  mind 


me  writers  jot)  vv 

is  held  to  be  the  acceptable,  if  not  the  best,  word.  We  are  supposed  to 
smile  because  Wordsworth,  at  a  day's  end,  was  wearied  from  his  quest  for 
the  exact  word.  But  where  Wordsworth  the  man  may  win  a  smile,  Words- 
worth the  writer,  fatiguing  himself  by  doing  what  is  a  writers  duty,  is  far 
from  laughable.  The  mot  juste  is  not  just  any  word.  Even  if  it  eludes  its 
pursuer,  the  search  for  it  seems  to  me  to  remain  among  the  obligations  of 
authorship.  Indeed,  the  true  hope  of  anyone  who  loves  the  language  and 
respects  it  is  to  stumble  upon,  not  the  correct  word  or  phrase,  but  the  word 
or  phrase  which  is  so  right  that  it  seems  inevitable. 

The  word  and  the  phrase  are  not  the  only  hurdles  — and  joys  — of 
authorship.  The  sentence  and  the  paragraph,  by  means  of  which  points 
are  made,  thoughts  communicated,  emotions  transferred,  pictures  painted, 
personalities  caught,  rhythms  established,  and  cadences  varied,  offer  other 
challenges  and  should  supply  their  own  sources  of  delight  and  pride.  When 
so  much  hurried  writing  is  done  for  hurried  reading,  I  find  it  comforting  to 
have  Shaw,  a  veritable  geyser  with  words  and  ideas,  admit  in  his  "Sixteen 
Self  Sketches"  how  depleting  he  found  his  labors  as  a  weekly  feuilletonist 
for  ten  years.  Why?  Because,  says  he,  of  "taking  all  the  pains  I  was  capa- 
ble of  to  get  to  the  bottom  of  every  sentence  I  wrote." 

One  of  the  modern  world's  luckier  occurrences  was  what  happened  at 
Harrow  when  a  boy  named  Winston  Churchill  was  being  "menaced  with 
Education."  Three  times,  he  tells  us  in  "A  Roving  Commission,"  his  back- 
wardness as  a  classical  scholar  forced  him  to  remain  in  the  same  form  and 
hence  repeat  the  same  elementary  course  in  English.  "Thus,"  writes  he 
(and  who  can  question  him?),  "I  got  into  my  bones  the  essential  structure 
of  the  ordinary  British  sentence  —  which  is  a  noble  thing.  .  .  .  Naturally  I 
am  biased  in  favor  of  boys  learning  English.  I  would  make  them  all  learn 
English:  and  then  I  would  let  the  clever  ones  learn  Latin  as  an  honor,  and 
Greek  as  a  treat.  But  the  only  thing  I  would  whip  them  for  would  be  for 
not  knowing  English.  I  would  whip  them  hard  for  that."  One  trembles  to 
think  how  many  of  us  whose  profession  is  writing  would  be  flogged  today 
if  lapses  in  English,  or  American,  were  whippable  offenses. 

Later  on  in  that  same  grand  book,  Churchill  has  his  more  precise  say  on 
the  subtleties,  intricacies,  and  possibilities  of  the  writer's  craft.  It  is  his 
opinion,  and  one  worth  heeding,  that,  "just  as  the  sentence  contains  one  idea 
in  all  its  fulness,  so  the  paragraph  should  embrace  a  distinct  episode;  and  as 
sentences  should  follow  one  another  in  harmonious  sequence,  so  the  para- 
graphs must  fit  on  to  one  another  like  the  automatic  couplings  of  railway 
carriages." 

I  quote  Churchill  and  these  others  belonging  to  the  peerage  of  prose- 
writers  because,  for  any  author  with  a  memory,  one  of  the  disheartening 
and  humbling  aspects  of  writing  is  the  recollection,  as  his  own  pen  moves, 
of  how  those  whom  he  admires  have  faced  and  solved  identical  problems. 
This  recollection  of  what  has  been  done,  this  sensing  of  what  could  and 


100  Writer 

should  be  done,  this  awareness  of  what  one  hopes  to  do  regardless  of 
whether  one  can  or  cannot  do  it  —  these  are  parts  of  that  literary  con- 
science, mentioned  by  Beerbohm,  which  keeps  a  writer's  pen  from  run- 
ning away  with  him.  I  know  they  are  factors  in  retarding  my  own  pen 
(meaning  my  typewriter,  pencil,  or  dictation)  even  on  those  happy  days 
when  a  subject  seems  to  write  itself,  when  sentences  come  easily,  and  one 
paragraph  gives  way  to  another. 

Style  is  a  strange  and  mysterious  thing.  Some  contemporary  writers  ap- 
pear to  get  along  without  it  and  to  want  to  do  so,  and  most  of  us  rightly 
disparage  it  when  it  shows  the  effort  that  has  gone  into  it.  Few  of  us,  for 
example,  can  read  Pater  today  without  being  irritated  and  put  off  by  the 
deliberate  intricacies  and  involutions  of  his  sentences.  His  style,  once  held 
to  be  a  model,  remains  a  model,  although  as  we  see  it  it  is  one  to  be  avoided 
rather  than  followed.  Pater  could  not  bring  himself  to  say  a  simple  thing 
simply.  His  orchestration  is  so  elaborate  that  the  melody  of  his  thought  is 
lost. 

Hazlitt  comes  closer  to  present-day  tastes.  More  than  being  the  enemy 
of  the  gaudy  and  "Occult"  schools  of  writing,  Hazlitt  was  not  only  a 
champion  but  at  his  best  a  matchless  practitioner  of  "The  Familiar  Style." 
Although  he  had  the  art  to  make  a  long  sentence  seem  short,  he  knew  the 
value  of  short  sentences.  "I  hate  anything,"  wrote  he,  "that  occupies  more 
space  than  it  is  worth.  I  hate  to  see  a  load  of  band-boxes  go  along  the 
street,  and  I  hate  to  see  a  parcel  of  big  words  without  any  meaning  in 
them." 

The  perpetual  challenge  of  writing,  the  challenge  presented  by  each  new 
sentence  is  to  say  exactly  what  one  wants  to  say  exactly  as  one  wants  to 
say  it.  This  is  where  the  anguish  of  composition  mixes  with  the  delights. 
This  is  where,  too,  style,  as  I  see  it,  comes  into  the  picture.  Style  is  merely 
the  means,  chosen  or  instinctive  (doubtless  both),  by  which  a  writer  has 
his  precise  say. 

Certainly,  style  is  not  affectation.  Conscious  though  it  may  be,  when 
self-conscious  it  is  an  obstruction.  Its  purpose,  to  my  way  of  thinking,  is  to 
give  the  reader  pleasure  by  sparing  him  the  work  which  the  writer  is  duty- 
bound  to  have  done  for  him.  Writers,  notwithstanding  their  hopes  or  am- 
bitions, may  or  may  not  be  artists.  But  there  is  no  excuse  for  their  not 
being  artisans.  The  style  is  the  man,  we  are  told.  True  in  the  final  and 
spiritual  sense  as  this  is,  style  is  more  than  that.  It  is  the  writing  man  in 
print.  It  is,  so  to  speak,  his  written  voice  and,  if  it  is  truly  his  voice,  even 
in  print  it  should  be  his  and  his  alone.  The  closer  it  comes  to  the  illusion 
of  speech,  perhaps  the  better.  Yet  the  closeness  of  the  written  word  to  the 
spoken  can,  and  in  fact  should,  never  be  more  than  an  illusion.  For  the 
point  of  the  written  word  is  planning,  as  surely  as  the  charm  of  the  spoken 
one  is  its  lack  of  it. 

Without  shame  I  confess  that,  regardless  of  how  unsatisfactory  the  re- 
sults may  be,  I  labor  when  writing  these  weekly  pieces  to  lighten  the  labor 


The  Writer's  Job  101 

of  those  who  may  read  them.  That  I  fail  again  and  again  I  know  to  my  own 
chagrin,  but  I  can  honestly  say  I  try.  I  not  only  rewrite;  I  often  rewrite  and 
rewrite  again.  I  do  this  though  I  am  well  aware  that  the  result  is  sentences 
and  paragraphs  which  do  not  bear  rereading.  I  rewrite  partly  in  longhand, 
partly  by  dictation,  occasionally  sitting  down,  sometimes  walking,  but  most 
often  snaking  my  way  across  the  floor  on  my  stomach.  My  desk,  a  migratory 
one,  is  the  small  piece  of  beavcrboard  I  push  before  me.  On  it  are  sheets  of 
typewritten  paper  darkened  with  hieroglyphics  which  must  be  deciphered 
immediately  to  be  read  at  all. 

Endeavoring  to  square  my  writing  with  my  writing  conscience,  and  hav- 
ing to  live  with  the  difference  between  what  I  would  like  to  have  done  and 
am  able  to  do,  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  writing  is  to  me  an  agony,  how- 
ever pleasant.  There  are  other  contributors  to  the  pleasures  and  the 
agonies  of  trying  to  keep  these  columns  fed.  Upon  these  I  shall  touch  next 
time.  Since  there  is  no  earthly  reason  why  anyone  should  be  interested, 
this  can  be  taken  as  a  threat,  not  a  promise.  I  can  delve  into  these  personal 
problems  of  authorship  only  at  a  season's  end.  What  is  more,  I  find  I  want 
to  do  so.  Surely  this  is  as  good  a  reason  for  writing  as  any,  and  a  better  one 
than  so  regular  an  offender  as  the  conductor  of  a  weekly  column  can  al- 
ways claim. 


How  to  Write  and  Be  Read 

Jacques  Tlarzun 

Here  and  there  a  touch  of  good  gram- 
mar for  picturesqueness. 

MARK    TWAIN 


Lite  Swift  and  Brown,  Barzun  looks  at  writing  as  a  job,  one  that 
is  too  often  not  done  in  a  workman/ike  way.  in  this  essay  lieTis  speaking 
not  to  students  but  to  teachers,  from  a  teacher's  point  of  view.  You  may 
find  it  enlightening  to  see  your  problem  from  this  novel  perspective,  by 
eavesdropping  on  a  teachers'  discussion. 

WRITING  comes  before  reading,  in  logic  and  also  in  the  public  mind.  No 
one  cares  whether  you  read  fast  or  slow,  well  or  ill,  but  as  soon  as  you  put 
pen  to  paper;  somebody  may  be  puzzled,  angry,  bored,  or  ecstatic;  and  if 

From  Teacher  in  America  by  Jacques  Barzun  by  permission  of  Little,  Brown  &  Company 
and  the  Atlantic  Monthly  Press.  Copyright,  1944,  and  1945,  by  Jacques  Barzun.  Pp. 
47-60. 


102 


Writer 


the  occasion  permits,  your  reader  is  almost  sure  to  exclaim  about  the 
schools  not  doing  their  duty.  This  is  the  oldest  literary  tradition,  of  which 
here  is  a  modern  instance:  — 


WHAT   KIND    OF   TEACHING   IN 
THE  PRIMARY  SCHOOLS? 

BY  "DISGUSTED" 

Recently  a  letter  came  into  my  of- 
fice from  a  boy  who  described  him- 
self as  a  first-year  high  school  student. 


He  wanted  infirmation  about  Africia, 
because  for  his  project  in  the  social 
studies  class  he  had  chozen  Africia. 
If  we  could  not  help  him,  were  could 
he  write?  In  closing,  he  was  ours  sin- 
ceerhj.  His  handwriting  was  compara- 
ble to  that  of  my  6-year-old  nephew. 


Too  bad,  but  I  am  not  alarmed.  This  student  of  "Africia"  may  or  may 
not  learn  to  spell:  it  is  not  nearly  so  important  as  his  diction  and  his  sen- 
tence structure,  which  the  plaintiff  withheld,  though  they  would  have  bet- 
ter enabled  us  to  judge  what  the  schools  were  really  doing.  What  I  fear 
about  this  boy  is  that  when  grown-up  and  provided  with  a  secretary  who 
can  spell,  he  will  write  something  like  this:  — 

DEAR  SIR:  — 

As  you  know,  security  prices  have  been  advancing  rapidly  in  the  recent  past 

in  belated  recognition  of  the  favorable  fundamentals  that  exist.    [Italics  mine] 

% 

What  is  decadent  about  this  I  shall  shortly  explain.  Meantime,  the  fact 
should  be  faced  squarely  that  good  writing  is  and  has  always  been  ex- 
tremely rare.  I  do  not  mean  fine  writing,  but  the  simple,  clear  kind  that 
everyone  always  demands  —  from  others.  Tjisjruth  is  that  Simple  English 
isno  ones  mother  tongue.  It  has  to  be  worked  for.  As  an  historian,  1  have 
plowed  through  state  papers^memoirs,  diaries^  and  letters,  and  I  know  that 
the  ability  to  write  has  only  a  remote  connection  with  either  intelligence,  or 
greatness,  or  schooling.  Lincoln  had  no  schooling  yet  became  one  of  the 
great  prose  writers  of  the  world.  Cromwell  went  to  Cambridge  and  was 
hardly  ever  able  to  frame  an  intelligible  sentence.  Another  man  of  thought 
and  action,  Admiral  Lord  Howe,  generally  refrained  from  writing  out  his 
plan  of  battle,  so  as  to  save  his  captains  from  inevitable  misunderstanding. 
Yet  Howe  managed  to  win  the  famous  First  of  June  by  tactics  that  revo- 
lutionized the  art,  and  led  directly  to  Nelson's  Trafalgar  plan  —  itself  a 
rather  muddled  piece  of  prose.  Let  us  then  start  with  no  illusion  of  an 
imaginary  golden  age  of  writing. 

Which  leaves  the  problem  of  doing  the  best  with  what  nature  gives  us. 
And  here  I  have  some  convictions  born  of  long  struggle,  with  myself  and 
with  others.  First,  I  pass  by  all  considerations  of  penmanship  and  elemen- 
tary spelling  to  remark  only  that  I  think  it  a  mistake  to  start  children  writ- 
ing on  typewriters,  and  worse  yet  to  let  them  grow  up  unable  to  do  any- 
thing but  print  capitals. 

Above  the  beginner's  level,  the  important  fact  is  that  writing  cannot  be 


The  Writers  Job  103 

taught  exclusively  in  a  course  called  English  Composition.  Writing  can 
only  be  taught  by  the  united  efforts  of  the  entire  teaching  staff.  This  holds 
good  of  any  school,  college,  or  university.  Joint  effort  is  needed,  not  merely 
to  "enforce  the  rules";  it  is  needed  to  insure  accuracy  in  every  subject.  How 
can  an  answer  in  physics  or  a  translation  from  the  French  or  an  historical 
statement  be  called  correct  if  the  phrasing  is  loose  or  the  key  word  wrong? 
Students  argue  that  the  reader  ot  the  paper  knows  perfectly  well  whaFls 
meant.  Probably  so,  but  a  written  exercise  is  designed  to  be  read;  it  is  not 
supposed  to  be  a  challenge  to  clairvoyance.  My  Italian-born  tailor  periodi- 
cally sends  me  a  postcard  which  runs:  "Your  clothes  is  ready  and  should 
come  down  for  a  fitting."  I  understand  him,  but  the  art  I  honor  him  for  is 
cutting  cloth,  not  precision  of  utterance.  Now  a  student  in  college  must  be 
inspired  to  achieve  in  all  subjects  the  utmost  accuracy  of  perception  com- 
bined with  the  utmost  artistry  of  expression.  The  two  merge  and  develop 
the  sense  of  good  workmanship,  of  preference  for  quality  and  truth,  which 
is  the  chief  mark  of  the  genuinely  educated  man. 

This  is  obviously  a  collective  task,  in  which  every  department  and  every 
faculty  has  a  common  stake.  But  it  is  not  enough  to  give  notice  that  these 
are  the  faculty's  sentiments.  Even  supposing  that  all  teachers  were  willing 
and  able  to  exert  vigilance  over  written  work,  there  would  still  be  many 
practical  problems  of  detail.  And  first^  what  motive  for  writing  well  can 
the  student  be  made  to  feel?  jfliere  is  only  one  valid  motive:  the  desire  to 
be  i^ad.  Tou  will  say  that  most  students  have  no  urge  either  to  write  or  to 
be  read.  True,  but  (  a  )  they  know  that  they  have  to  write  and  (  b  )  most  of 
them  want  to  be  well  thought  of.  They  should  accordingly  be  made  to  see 
that  reading  the  ordinary  student  paper  can  be  a  nuisance  and  a  bore  to 
the  teacher,  and  that  the  proper  aim  of  writing  should  be  to  make  it  a 
pleasure.  This  is  another  way  of  saying  that  most  school  writing  is  bad 
because  student  and  teacher  play  at  writing  and  reading  instead  of  taking 
it  seriously.  The  teacher  expects  second-rate  hokum  and  the  student  sup- 
plies it.  Let  the  teacher  assert  his  rights  just  as  the  students  do:  in  many 
college  classes  the  men  protest  —  quite  rightly  —  when  they  are  asked  to 
read  a  dull  or  ill-organized  book.  Similarly,  the  instructor  may  warn  the 
students  that  when  they  turn  in  filler  and  padding,  jargon  and  lingo,  stuff 
and  nonsense,  he  will  mark  them  down,  not  only  in  his  grade  book,  but  in 
his  violated  soul. 


s  vae     su.  ^  —  --  -  —  ^  • 

Naturally,  this  conscious  brutality  must  go  with  a(helping  handJ  in  fact  j. 
reyisigrLof  all  jisnal  practicesjs  in  order.  The  embargo  on  hokum  will  al- 
eady  work  a  healthy  elimination  oFbad^)rose.  Then  the  long  Term  Paper 
must  be  discarded  and  replaced  with  the  short  essay,  not  more  than  five 
typewritten  pages  in  length.  Students  always  ask  how  long  a  final  paper 
should  be  and  they  are  absolutely  right  in  believing  that  most  instructors 
are  impressed  by  mere  bulk.  But  when  one  knows  how  difficult  it  is  to 
articulate  even  three  measly  thoughts  around  a  single  point,  it  is  folly  to 
ask  eighteen-year-olds  to  produce  thirty-  or  forty-page  monographs  that 


104  Writer 

shall  be  readable.  What  they  produce  is  an  uncarded  mattress  of  quota- 
tions, paraphrase,  "however's"  and  "Thus  we  see's."  Size  being  aimed  at, 
there  is  no  time  for  rewriting  or  reordering  the  material  culled  from  half  a 
dozen  books,  and  the  main  effort  goes  into  the  irrelevant  virtues  of  neat 
typing,  plentiful  footnotes,  and  the  mannerisms  of  scholarship. 

The  short  paper  —  and  I  speak  from  a  large  pile  accumulated  over 
twelve  years  —  aims  and  arrives  at  different  ends.  It  answers  the  reader's 
eternal  question:  Just  what  are  you  trying  to  tell  me?  It  is  in  that  spirit  that 
student  writing  must  be  read,  corrected,  and  if  need  be  rewritten.  When 
first  presented,  it  must  already  be  a  second  or  third  draft.  The  only  reason 
I  can  think  of  for  the  somewhat  higher  average  of  good  writing  in  France 
is  that  the  brouillon  is  a  national  institution.  The  brouillon  (literally: 
scrambled  mess)  is  the  first  draft,  and  even  the  concierge  writing  to  the 
police  about  anarchists  on  the  third  floor  begins  with  a  brouillon,  later 
found  by  his  heirs. 

Of  course  it  is  no  use  telling  an  American  boy  or  girl  that  the  essay  must 
be  written,  laid  aside,  and  rewritten  at  least  once  before  handing  in:  the 
innocents  do  not  know  what  to  do  after  their  first  painful  delivery.  So  the 
simplest  thing  is  to  ask  early  in  the  term  for  a  good  five-page  essay,  which 
turns  out  to  be  pretty  bad.  This  is  fully  annotated  by  the  reader  and  turned 
back  before  the  next  one  is  called  for.  But  the  corrections  on  it  are  not 
merely  the  conventional  sp.,  ref.,  punc.,  and  awk.  which  the  writers  have 
seen  in  their  margins  from  the  seventh  grade  on.  The  comments  are  in- 
tensely and  painfully  personal,  being  the  responses  that  an  alert  reader 
would  feel  if  he  were  encountering  the  essay  in  print.  The  result  is  that 
even  the  best  students  feel  abashed,  if  not  actually  resentful.  To^whicL-ene 
qgn  only  say  that  they  should  resent  the  neglect  in  which  all  their  previous 
teachers  have  left  them. —  " "^ '  " " 

^  This  neglect  has  not  damaged  their  grammar  so  much  as  their  vocabu- 
lary. Since  the  last  thing  any  writer  learns  is  the  uses  of  words,  it  is  no 
wonder  if  untutored  youths  of  ability  write  like  the  stockbroker  whom  I 
quoted  about  "favorable  fundamentals  that  exist"  —  spineless,  vague,  and 
incoherent  prose.  Indeed,  the  exact  parallel  comes  this  moment  under  my 
hand,  taken  from  a  very  able  student's  report  on  Newman's  University 
Sketches:  "A  University  that  rests  on  a  firm  financial  foundation  has  the 
greater  ability  to  unleash  the  minds  of  its  students."  Despite  the  difference 
m  names,  the  stockbroker  is  that  boy's  putative  father.  Their  failure  comes 
from  a  like  inattention  to  meaning  —  their  own  and  that  of  the  words  they 
fise!  ~""~  * 

'pjisjnfiasstiiat  words  and  tone  are  the  main  things  to  be  taught.  Spell- 
ing, grammar,  and  punctuation  do  not  precede  bill  fulluvv  liftKeTorder  of 
importance.  They  follow  also  quite  naturally  in  the  order  of  facility.  Ac- 
cordingly, the  teacher-critic  must  slowly  and  carefully  explain  to  the  student 
what  each  word  conveys  in  its  particular  context.  I  find  that  in  the  essay 
just  cited  I  have  written  such  comments  as:  "I  can't  follow  —  This  repeats 


The  Writers  Job  105 

in  disguise  —  'avocational  fruit'  suggests  alligator  pears:  why?  —  We  now 
have  about  eight  'problems'  on  hand:  Beginl — What!  more  issues  and 
problems?  —  Commercial  lingo  —  Who  is  'we?  —  Why  'cradle':  the  meta- 
phor is  lost  —  Who  says  this?  — 'Patina'  is  not  'clothing' —  Don  t  scold  and 
then  trail  off  in  this  way  —  This  is  your  point  at  last."  In  addition,  images 
are  changed,  synonyms  proposed,  and  bad  sentences  recast,  sometimes  in 
alternative  ways,  in  order  to  show  precisely  how  the  original  misleads  and 
how  clarity  is  to  be  reached. 

Tone  grows  naturally  out  of  diction,  but  the  choice  of  words  betrays 
feelings  of  which  the  young  writer  is  usually  unaware.  "Are  you  pleading, 
denouncing,  coaxing,  or  laughing?  Do  you  back  up  this  exaggeration?  Why 
suddenly  talk  down,  or  turn  pedant?  If  you  want  to  change  the  mood  in- 
side the  piece,  you  must  modulate,  otherwise  your  reader  will  stumble  and 
you  will  lose  him."  The  student  who  learns  to  quiz  himself  in  this  fashion 
over  his  first  draft  is  learning  not  only  something  about  English,  about 
writing,  and  ahnnt  thinking  but  about  the  human  heart  as  well. 

At  the  risk  of  tediousnesS  I  repeat  that  what  has  to  be  done  is  to  drama- 
tize the  relation  between  writer  and  reader.  The  blunt  comments  are  just 
a  device  to  break  the  spell  of  routine,  and  though  they  administer  an  un- 
pleasant shock  at  first,  they  are  also  flattering.  "Somebody  cares  about  what 
I  want  to  say."  The  teacher  is  no  longer  a  paid  detective  hunting  stray 
commas.  -r"" (^^Jbi^l^-  *-  s*4^~t~  '^^  ' 

To  point  these  lessons  up  in  minute  detail  to  a  student  of  average  powers 
is  of  course  time-consuming  —  but  what  else  is  the  teacher  there  for?  Time 
spent  on  reading  and  writing,  in  any  subject,  is  never  a  waste,  and  the 
reward  almost  always  comes,  often  astonishingly  great.  The  excitement 
aroused  by  the  discovery  that  words  live  is  like  finding  that  you  can 
balance  on  skates.  A  new  world  of  motion  and  of  feeling  is  opened  out  to 
the  student,  a  source  of  some  anguish  balanced  by  lifelong  delight.  George 
Gissing  writes  somewhere  that  he  saw  an  excursion  steamer  advertised  as 
being  "Replete  with  Ladies'  Lavatories"  and  he  comments  on  how  many 
people  could  pass  by  the  sign  without  a  smile.  My  own  favorite  recollec- 
tion is  of  a  guarantee  pasted  on  a  modest  shop  window:  "Hats  fitted  to  the 
head  exclusively"  —  fun  in  every  ad  and  at  the  company's  expense. 

The  pleasure  to  be  taken  in  words  is  as  innocent  and  satisfying  as  the 
moral  effect  is  clear:  unless  words  are  used  deftly  to  set  the  imagination  on 
its  travels,  language,  literature,  conversation,  and  friendship  are  full  of 
snares.  Much  of  our  modern  anxiety  about  the  tyranny  of  words  and  of  our 
desire  for  foolproof  Basic  comes  from  the  uneasy  suspicion  that  we  have 
lost  the  art  of  diction  and  with  it  the  control  over  our  own  minds.  This  is 
more  serious  than  it  seems,  for  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  world  outside  the 
school  largely  checks  what  present  instruction  attempts,  as  we  shall  see. 
But  having  spoken  of  the  imagination,  let  me  first  meet  a  likely  objection 
to  the  advice  here  proposed.  I  can  fancy  some  reader  for  whom  school 
compositions  were  torture  shaking  a  skeptical  head  and  saying:  "Most 


106  Writer 

young  children  have  very  little  to  say  and  school  assignments  blot  out  even 
that  little."  I  agree  and  the  second  great  practical  problem  is,  What  to  ask 

girls  to  write  about? 
The  clones  are  easy,  Don't  ask  them  for  "A  vacation  experience"  or  "My 


most  embarrassing  moment,"  or  "I  am  the  Mississippi  River."  Such  topics 
will  only  elicit  the  driest  kind  of  hokum,  though  to  be  fair  I  must  say  that 
they  are  an  improvement  on  the  older  practice  of  expecting  infant  moraliz- 
ing and  "What  the  flag  means  to  me."  Although  as  a  child  I  enjoyed  writ- 
ing —  history  chiefly  —  I  can  remember  the  blankness  of  mind  that  over- 
took me  when  we  had  to  do  a  dissertation  morale.  I  still  have  a  school  text 
with  some  of  those  themes  checked  as  having  been  done  —  for  example: 
"The  Faithful  Dog.  —  A  poor  man  has  resolved  to  drown  his  dog.  Thrown 
into  the  river,  the  dog  tries  to  scramble  up  the  bank,  but  his  master  lunges 
out  to  kill  him  with  a  stick.  In  so  doing,  he  slips  and  falls.  The  dog  saves 
him.  Remorse  of  the  owner." 

I  regret  to  say  that  French  school  life  is  stuffed  with  such  thorns  as  these, 
but  I  am  not  sure  that  the  opposite  "progressive"  extreme  of  turning  chil- 
dren into  researchers  on  their  own  is  desirable  either.  The  eleven-year-old 
son  of  a  friend  of  mine  once  told  me  that  he  was  writing  a  "project"  on 
Papyrus.  Why  papyrus?  Well,  the  class  had  been  "doing"  Egypt  and  each 
child  was  assigned  one  aspect  of  Egyptian  civilization.  Where  was  the  in- 
formation to  come  from?  From  encyclopedias,  museums,  friends,  and 
paper  manufacturers  —  hence  such  letters  to  strangers  as  the  one  about 
"Africia"  quoted  earlier.  As  I  see  it,  two  things  are  wrong  with  this  scheme. 
One  is  that  it  gives  a  false  freedom;  the  other  is  that  it  hardly  trains  in  the 
art  of  composing.  Did  this  boy  care  at  all  about  Egypt,  let  alone  about  the 
technicalities  of  papyrology?  A  child  should  select  a  topic  that  truly  en- 
gages his  interest.  To  eliminate  pretense  he  must  be  helped  to  do  this  by 
means  of  questions  and  suggestions.  At  any  age,  it  is  very  reassuring  to  be 
told  that  you  don't  really  want  to  write  about  the  Tariff.  After  two  or 
three  casts  a  real  subject  emerges,  satisfactory  to  both  parties. 

Next  should  come  into  play  the  single  good  feature  of  the  French  dis- 
sertation, namely  its  furnishing  a  plan  or  program.  Depending  on  the 
child's  age  a  briefer  or  longer  table  of  contents  should  be  set  out  for  each 
theme,  either  in  logically  organized  form,  or  pell-mell  for  the  student  him- 
self to  disentangle.  After  all,  what  is  wanted  is  prose,  not  a  riot  of  fancy. 
In  my  experience,  even  examination  questions  are  answered  better  when 
they  consist  of  five  or  six  sentences  outlining  a  topic  for  discussion.  This 
means  further  that  brevity  should  never  be  accounted  a  fault  in  itself. 
After  thirty,  we  can  all  spin  tall  tales,  mostly  secondhand,1  but  students, 
even  of  college  age,  have  had  very  little  conscious  experience  of  life  or 
books  and  it  is  no  wonder  their  minds  are  bone  dry.  One  should  moreover 

1  No  course,  therefore,  should  ever  be  called  Creative  Writing.  Let  us  have  at  least 
a  collective  modesty  and  leave  to  charlatans  the  advertising  of  "How  to  Write  Powerful 
Plays."  [Author.] 


The  Writers  Job  107 

keep  in  view  the  possibility  that  in  some  of  them  brevity  may  come  from 
genius.  American  schoolmarms  who  relate  the  anecdote  of  Lincoln's  "fail- 
ure" with  the  Gettysburg  Address  are  just  as  likely  to  say  at  one  glance, 
"Jane,  this  is  too  short."  How  do  they  know?  Perhaps  they  unwittingly 
agree  with  the  Gettysburg  crowd  that  Everett's  speech,  being  longer,  was 
better. 

Some  secondary  schools,  particularly  the  private  ones,  require  the  writ- 
ing of  verse  as  well  as  of  prose.  If  the  students  are  really  shown  how  to  go 
about  versifying  and  are  not  expected  to  be  "poetic,"  there  is  no  harm  in 
it.  Verse  writing  is  excellent  practice  for  the  prose  writer  and  the  striving 
for  correct  rhythm  and  rhyme  gives  the  student  of  literature  a  feeling  for 
words  that  may  not  otherwise  be  obtained.  What  can  be  done  in  this  way 
before  college  by  a  gifted  teacher  has  been  shown  by  the  experience  of 
my  friend,  the  poet  Dudley  Fitts,  formerly  at  Choate  and  now  at  Andover. 
In  collegiate  circles,  it  is  now  well  known  that  a  freshman  prepared  under 
him  is  a  literate,  sometimes  a  polished  writer,  who  can  be  safely  allowed  to 
skip  into  advanced  work.  No  doubt  Fitts  has  had  his  failures  like  all  of  us, 
but  it  is  the  successes  we  are  looking  for  and  that  count  in  leavening  the 
mass. 


1  am  not  so  foolish  as  to  think  that  carrying  out  my  few  suggestions 
would  get  rid  of  illiterate  A.B.'s.  I  am  too  conscious  of  my  initial  point 
about  "Education,"  which  is  that  the  school  does  not  work  in  a  vacuum 
but  rather  in  a  vortex  of  destructive  forces.  As  regards  writing,  we  in  the 
twentieth  century  must  offset  not  only  the  constant  influence  of  careless 
speech  and  the  indifference  of  parents,  but  the  tremendous  output  of 
jargon  issuing  from  the  new  mechanical  means  at  man's  disposal.  Worst  of 
all,  circumstances  have  conspired  to  put  the  most  corrupting  force  at  the 
very  heart  of  the  school  system.    It  is  not  newspapers,  radio  scripts,  and 
movies  that  spoil  our  tongue  so  much  as  textbooks,  official  documents, 
commencement  speeches,  and  learned  works.2 

The  rise,  at  the  turn  of  the  century,  of  what  James  called  "the  softer 
pedagogy"  is  responsible  for  a  debasement  of  language  beyond  all  bounds 
of  forgiveness.  The  desire  to  be  kind,  to  sound  new,  to  foster  useful  at- 
titudes, to  appear  "scientific,"  and  chiefly  also  the  need  to  produce  rapidly, 
account  for  this  hitherto  unheard-of  deliquescence.  In  the  victims,  the 
softness  goes  to  the  very  roots  of  the  mind  and  turns  it  into  mush.  And 
among  the  "new"  educators  thus  afflicted,  the  Progressive  vanguard  has 
naturally  outstripped  the  rest.  I  shall  not  multiply  examples  from  cata- 

2  See  Mr.  Maury  Maverick's  excellent  denunciation  of  what  he  calls  Gobbledygook 
in  the  New  Yorfc  Times  for  May  21,  1944.    The  rebuttals  attempting  to  show  that 
roundabout  expressions  spare  shocks  to  the  sick  are  hardly  to  the  point.    The  healthy 
ought  to  be  able  to  stand  directness  and  even  mention  of  "death  and  taxes."  "Loss  of 
life"  and  "fiscal  levies"  cost  just  as  much  in  the  end.   [Author.] 


108  Writer 

logues,  reports,  and  speeches,  though  over  the  years  I  have  gathered  a 
blush-making  collection.  I  want  only  to  identify  the  evil  because  it  spreads 
like  the  plague. 

It  consists  mainly  of  what  our  forefathers  called  "cant  phrases/'  strung 
together  without  continuity,  like  wash  on  a  line.  At  a  faculty  meeting,  a 
teacher  asks  the  Director  of  Admissions  why  there  seem  to  be  more  music 
students  applying  than  before.  The  Director  replies,  "Well,  I  should  say 
that  the  forces  undergirding  the  process  are  societal."  Or  a  committee 
chairman  wants  to  know  what  we  do  next.  "I  think,"  says  the  secretary, 
"that  we  should  go  on  to  institute  actual  implementation." 

Teachers  steeped  in  this  medium  are  bound  to  ooze  it  out  themselves, 
particularly  if  weekly  and  daily  they  receive  official  instructions  like  these: 
"Specify  the  kinds  of  change  or  permanence  the  student  seems  to  crave, 
reject,  or  fear;  the  reasons  given  for  liking-disliking,  giving  up-persistence; 
complaining-boasting.  ...  It  cannot  be  too  strongly  emphasized  that  the 
observations  of  characteristics  associated  with  age  and  background  are  not 
being  made  in  the  general  area  of  adolescent  behavior  but  under  specific 
and  limited  conditions  —  those  set  by  the  aims,  emphases,  and  assump- 
tions of  one  particular  faculty.3  Moreover,  the  observations  of  what  appear 
to  be  the  interests  of  freshmen  conceal  a  possible  ambiguity.  The  term 
'interests'  may  refer  to  fairly  superficial  interests  in  the  sense  of  surprise, 
pleasure,  enjoyment,  which  are  comparatively  temporary;  or  'interests'  may 
involve  an  awakening  curiosity  which  leads  to  consistent  inquiry  along  the 
lines  of  some  project."  The  reader  must  imagine  not  merely  a  paragraph 
taken  at  random,  but  pages  and  pages  of  similar  woolly  abstractions, 
mimeographed  at  the  rate  of  nine  and  one-half  pounds  per  person  per 
semester.  If  the  words  "specific"  and  "objective"  were  blotted  out  of  the 
English  language,  Progressive  Education  would  have  to  shutup  _._.  .  shop. 

As  for  students  in  teachers'  colleges,  the  long  climb  up  tlie  ladder^of 
learning  comes  to  mean  the  mastering  of  this  ghoulish  Desperanto,  so  that 
with  the  attainment  of  the  M.A.  degree,  we  get  the  following  utterance: — 

In  the  proposed  study  I  wish  to  describe  and  evaluate  representative  pro- 
grams in  these  fields  as  a  means  of  documenting  what  seems  to  me  a  trend  of 
increasing  concern  with  the  role  of  higher  education  in  the  improvement  of 
interpersonal  and  intergroup  relations  and  of  calling  attention  in  this  way  to 
outstanding  contributions  in  practice. 

Some  readers  might  think  this  quotation  very  learned  and  highbrow  in- 
deed. But  in  fact  it  says  nothing  definite.  It  only  embodies  the  disinclina- 
tion to  think.  This  is  a  general  truth,  and  nothing  is  more  symptomatic  of 
the  whole  jargon  than  the  fantastic  use  and  abuse  it  makes  of  the  phrase 
"in  terms  of."  The  fact  is  worth  a  moment's  attention.  "In  terms  of"  used  to 
refer  to  things  that  had  terms,  like  algebra.  "Put  the  problem  in  terms  of 

3  I  regret  to  say  that  "faculty"  here  means  "faculty  member"  —  a  usage  so  far  con- 
fined to  the  progressive  schools.  [Author.] 


The  Writers  Job  109 

a  and  b.n  This  makes  sense.  But  in  educational  circles  today  "in  terms  of 
means  any  connection  between  any  two  things.  "We  should  grade  students 
in  terms  of  their  effort"  —  that  is,  for  or  according  to  their  effort.  The  New 
Yorfc  Public  Library  Bulletin  prints:  "The  first  few  months  of  employment 
would  be  easier  .  .  .  and  more  efficient  in  terms  of  service  ..."  —  that  is, 
would  yield  more  efficient  service.  But  no  one  seems  to  care  how  or  when 
or  why  his  own  two  ideas  are  related.  The  gap  in  thought  is  plugged  with 
"in  terms  of."  I  have  been  asked,  "Will  you  have  dinner  with  me,  not 
tonight  or  tomorrow,  but  in  terms  of  next  week?"  A  modern  Caesar  would 
write:  "All  Gaul  is  to  be  considered  in  terms  of  three  parts."  * 

From  this  Educator's  patois,  easily  the  worst  English  now  spoken,  we 
ought  to  pass  to  the  idiom  of  textbooks,  since  they  are  written  either  by 
educators  or  by  teachers.  Happily,  there  is  a  standard  set  by  other  books  — 
trade  books  —  and  it  is  not  true  that  all  textbooks  are  as  badly  written  as 
those  on  education.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  very  encouraging  that  the  leading 
ones  in  every  field  are  usually  well  planned  and  well  written.  The  success 
of  Morison  and  Commager's  Growth  of  the  American  Republic  is  only  the 
most  recent  case  in  point.  Students,  nevertheless,  are  asked  to  read  many 
ill-written  books.  There  is  no  excuse  for  this,  though  it  is  by  no  means  the 
only  source  of  error.  We  must  remember  that  students  do  not  read  only 
books;  they  read  what  every  man  reads,  and  this  would  do  no  harm  —  it 
does  no  harm  —  when  the  mind  is  trained  to  resilience  by  the  kind  of 
writing  practice  I  have  advocated. 

Unfortunately,  with  the  vast  increase  in  public  schooling  since  1870,  an 
entirely  new  notion  of  what  is  good  English  has  come  to  prevail.  Awakened 
by  free  schooling,  the  people  have  shown  worthy  intentions.  They  want  to 
be  right  and  even  elegant,  and  so  become  at  once  suspicious  of  plainness 
and  pedantic.  They  purchase  all  sorts  of  handbooks  that  make  a  fetish  of 
spelling,  of  avoiding  split  infinitives,  of  saying  "it  is  I"  (with  the  common 
result  of  "between  you  and  I")  — in  short,  dwell  on  trivialities  or  vulgar- 
isms which  do  not  affect  style  or  thought  in  the  slightest.  But  with  this  in- 
tolerance towards  crude  and  plain  error  goes  a  remarkable  insensitivity  to 
inflated  nonsense.  Most  bad  journalism  is  only  highbrow  verbosity,  yet  the 
popular  mind  continues  to  believe  that  the  pedantry  which  it  likes  is  simple 
and  the  simplicity  which  it  finds  hard  is  complex.  Here  is  the  opening  of  a 
serial  thriller  in  a  Boston  paper:  — 

Strange  things  happen  in  Chinatown.  But  even  that  exotic  and  perverse 
district  seldom  presented  drama  as  fantastic  as  the  secret  that  hid  among  the 
silk  and  jade  and  porcelain  splendors  of  the  famous  House  of  the  Mandarin  on 
Mulberry  Lane. 

There  is  a  certain  art  in  this,  and  I  take  note  of  "porcelain  splendors"  as 
the  mot  juste  for  bathtubs  on  exhibit.  But  the  passage  as  a  whole  contains 

*  The  objectionable  phrase  is  now  to  be  found  in  newspapers,  business  reports,  and 
private  correspondence.  It  is  a  menace  in  terms  of  the  whole  nation.  [Author.] 


110  Writer 

nothing  but  arty  and  highfalutin  words,  joined  by  the  good  will  of  the 
reader  rather  than  the  mind  of  the  writer.  Still,  every  newspaper  reader 
feels  he  understands  it.  Take  now  a  well-known  sentence  composed  of 
common  words,  all  but  two  of  them  single  syllables:  "If  there  are  more 
trees  in  the  world  than  there  are  leaves  on  any  one  tree,  then  there  must 
be  at  least  two  trees  with  the  same  number  of  leaves."  Read  this  aloud 
and  almost  any  listener  will  respond  with  "Huh?  Say  that  again/'  For  this 
sentence  records  a  thought,  and  the  Chinatown  "drama"  did  not. 

The  close  logic  in  the  truly  "simple"  sentence  makes  the  contrast  sharper, 
but  it  would  be  just  as  sharp  between  a  feeling  clearly  put  and  a  feeble 
attempt  to  thrill.  Thus  there  is  a  superstition  that  the  novels  of  Henry 
James  are  written  in  a  "difficult  style."  Yet  if  you  examine  them,  you  will 
find  that  the  words  and  sentences  —  in  The  Ambassadors,  for  example  — 
are  in  themselves  quite  usual.  But  the  feelings  they  convey  are  unusual  and 
subtle,  and  require  attention.  At  the  same  time  they  also  compel  it,  which 
is  all  that  an  artist  takes  pains  for  in  writing. 

Conversely,  the  only  thing  that  can  be  asked  of  a  writer  is  that  he  should 
know  his  own  meaning  and  present  it  as  forcibly  as  he  can.  The  rule  has 
not  changed  since  Byron  affirmed  that  "easy  writing  makes  damned  hard 
reading."  Hence  there  is  great  value,  as  I  think,  in  having  college  gradu- 
ates recognize  good  prose  when  they  see  it,  know  that  a  tolerable  para- 
graph must  have  gone  through  six  or  seven  versions,  and  be  ready  to  follow 
athletically  on  the  trail  of  articulate  thoughts,  rather  than  look  for  the  soapy 
incline  to  muddled  meaning. 

One  does  not  have  to  go  very  far  for  the  enjoyment  of  precise,  sinewy 
writing.  The  same  newspaper  that  furnishes  tripe  for  the  morning  meal 
also  brings  such  rarer  tidbits  as  these:  "They  [the  robot  bombs]  are  of  much 
the  same  shape  and  size  as  a  small  fighter  plane,  with  stubby  wings.  They 
come  over  with  tails  aglow  from  the  propelling  rocket  force,  like  little 
meteors  moving  at  a  nightmare  pace  by  dark,  and  by  day  like  little  black 
planes  with  tails  afire."  This  is  perfection;  and  here  is  poetry:  "Mr.  Mc- 
Caffrey, himself  the  father  of  two  children,  and  therefore  schooled  in  ap- 
prehension, ran  across  the  street  .  .  .  shouting  a  warning." 

When  the  daily  reporter,  harried  by  falling  bombs  or  hustled  by  a  city 
editor,  can  write  like  this,  it  is  depressing  to  return  to  agencies  closer  to  the 
school  and  find  verbal  laziness  encouraged  and  imbecility  taken  for 
granted.  One  publisher  of  reference  works  sends  out  a  circular  stressing 
the  fact  that  his  books  give  the  pronunciation  of  "all  difficult  —  'hard-to-say' 
—  words."  Is  this  where  we  are  after  fifty  years  of  quasi-universal  literacy? 
Is  the  word  "difficult"  so  difficult  that  it  has  to  be  translated  in  its  own 
sentence?  The  question  is  one  for  readers,  and  it  is  to  the  subject  of  read- 
ing that  I  now  turn. 


The  Writers  Job  111 


Poets,  too,  have  written  of  their  problems.  But  writing  is  writing, 
whether  it  be  labeled  "freshman  theme/'  "journalism,"  "business  Eng- 
lish," "technical  report/'  or  "literary  art."  The  difficulties  these  poets 
talk  of  are  relevant  to  your  own  writing  problems.  To  Melville,  the 
hard  thing  is  to  bring  all  the  conflicting  qualities  of  his  emotional  and 
intellectual  nature  into  harmonious  response  to  life,  to  express  the  full- 
est human  significance  of  his  subject.  To  Yeats,  the  struggle  is  with  the 
materials,  words:  every  fine  thing  since  Adam's  fall  needs  much  laboring; 
poetry,  woman's  beauty,  love,  must  seem  spontaneous,  but  each  re- 
quires labor  —  and  the  practical  world  these  days  cares  little  for  any  of 
these  as  an  art.  Sidney,  struggling  to  find  arguments  and  present  them 
artfully  to  his  beloved,  discovered  that  the  most  moving  words  would 
be  the  most  direct  expression  of  his  feelings. 

Art 

Herman  JWelville  •  iSi9~i89i 

IN  PLACID  HOURS  well-pleased  we  dream 
Of  many  a  brave  unbodied  scheme. 
But  form  to  lend,  pulsed  life  create, 
What  unlike  things  must  meet  and  mate: 
A  flame  to  melt  —  a  wind  to  freeze; 
Sad  patience  —  joyous  energies; 
Humility  —  yet  pride  and  scorn; 
Instinct  and  study;  love  and  hate; 
Audacity  —  reverence.  These  must  mate 
And  fuse  with  Jacob's  mystic  heart, 
To  wrestle  with  the  angel  —  Art. 

Adam's  Curse 

"William  'Butler  yeats  •  iS65~i939 

WE  SAT  together  at  one  summer's  end, 
That  beautiful  mild  woman,  your  close  friend, 
And  you  and  I,  and  talked  of  poetry. 
I  said,  'A  line  will  take  us  hours  maybe; 
Yet  if  it  does  not  seem  a  moment's  thought, 
Our  stitching  and  unstitching  has  been  naught. 

William  Butler  Yeats,  Collected  Poems  (New  York:  The  Macmillan  Company,  1950). 
Copyright,  1940,  by  Bertha  Georgie  Yeats.  Reprinted  by  permission  of  Mrs.  William 
Butler  Yeats  and  of  The  Macmillan  Company  ot  Canada,  Ltd. 


112  Writer 

Better  go  down  upon  your  marrow-bones 

And  scrub  a  kitchen  pavement,  or  break  stones 

Like  an  old  pauper,  in  all  kinds  of  weather; 

For  to  articulate  sweet  sounds  together 

Is  to  work  harder  than  all  these,  and  yet 

Be  thought  an  idler  by  the  noisy  set 

Of  bankers,  schoolmasters,  and  clergymen 

The  martyrs  call  the  world/ 

And  thereupon 

That  beautiful  mild  woman  for  whose  sake 
There's  many  a  one  shall  find  out  all  heartache 
On  finding  that  her  voice  is  sweet  and  low 
Replied,  To  be  born  woman  is  to  know  — 
Although  they  do  not  talk  of  it  at  school  — 
That  we  must  labour  to  be  beautiful/ 

I  said,  It's  certain  there  is  no  fine  thing 

Since  Adam's  fall  but  needs  much  labouring. 

There  have  been  lovers  who  thought  love  should  be 

So  much  compounded  of  high  courtesy 

That  they  would  sigh  and  quote  with  learned  looks 

Precedents  out  of  beautiful  old  books; 

Yet  now  it  seems  an  idle  trade  enough/ 

We  sat  grown  quiet  at  the  name  of  love; 
We  saw  the  last  embers  of  daylight  die, 
And  in  the  trembling  blue-green  of  the  sky 
A  moon,  worn  as  if  it  had  been  a  shell 
Washed  by  time's  waters  as  they  rose  and  fell 
About  the  stars  and  broke  in  days  and  years. 

I  had  a  thought  for  no  one's  but  your  ears: 

That  you  were  beautiful,  and  that  I  strove 

To  love  you  in  the  old  high  way  of  love; 

That  it  had  all  seemed  happy,  and  yet  we'd  grown 

As  weary-hearted  as  that  hollow  moon. 


Look  in  Thy  Heart  and  Write 

Sir  Philip  Sidney  •  i554-*586 

LOVING  IN  TRUTH,  and  fain  in  verse  my  love  to  show, 

That  she,  dear  she,  might  take  some  pleasure  of  my  pain, 

Pleasure  might  cause  her  read,  reading  might  make  her  know, 

Knowledge  might  pity  win,  and  pity  grace  obtain, 

I  sought  fit  words  to  paint  the  blackest  face  of  woe; 

Studying  inventions  fine,  her  wits  to  entertain, 

Oft  turning  others'  leaves  to  see  if  thence  would  flow 

Some  fresh  and  fruitful  showers  upon  my  sun-burned  brain. 

But  words  came  halting  forth,  wanting  Invention's  stay; 

Invention,  Nature's  child,  fled  step-dame  Study's  blows, 

And  others'  feet  still  seemed  but  strangers  in  my  way. 

Thus,  great  with  child  to  speak,  and  helpless  in  my  throes, 

Biting  my  truant  pen,  beating  myself  for  spite, 

Tool,"  said  my  Muse  to  me,  'look  in  thy  heart  and  write.* 


113 


Writer's  Aims 


"Is  that  really  what  you  meant 
to  say,  Miss  Tomkins?" 


Two  Letters  on  Writing 

Sherwood  Anderson  •  1876- i94i 


An  American  writer  who  did  as  much  as  any  other  to  free  later 
writers  to  deal  honestly  and  directly  with  their  own  experience  was 
Sherwood  Anderson,  whose  brooding  fictional  account  of  small-town 
life  in  Winesburg  Ohio  (1919)  brought  Americans  of  his  generation 
face  to  face  with  themselves.  Here  are  two  letters  of  advice  and  en- 
couragement he  wrote  to  a  young  writer. 

TROUTDALE,  VIRGINIA,  August  27,  1938 
DEAR  GEORGE  FREITAG: 

It  sometimes  seems  to  me  that  I  should  prepare  a  book  designed  to  be 
read  by  other  and  younger  writers.  This  not  because  of  accomplishment  on 
my  own  part,  but  because  of  the  experiences,  the  particular  experiences,  I 
have  had. 

It  is  so  difficult  for  most  of  us  to  realize  how  fully  and  completely  com- 
mercialism enters  into  the  arts.  For  example,  how  are  you  to  knowTEat 
really^tte  opinion  of  the  publisher  or  the  magazine  editor  in  regard  to  your 

From  The  Letters  of  Sherwood  Anderson.  Selected  and  edited  by  Howard  Mumford 
Jones,  in  association  with  Walter  B.  Hideout  (Boston:  Little,  Brown  &  Company, 
1953).  Reprinted  by  permission  of  the  publishers  and  of  Mrs.  Eleanor  Anderson. 

114, 


The  Writers  Aims  115 

work,  what  is  a  story  and  what  isn't,  means  nothing?  Some  of  my  own 
stories,  for  example,  that  have  now  become  almost  American  classics,  that 
are  put  before  students  in  our  schools  and  colleges  as  examples  of  good 
storytelling,  were,  when  first  written,  when  submitted  to  editors,  and  when 
seen  by  some  of  the  so-called  outstanding  American  critics,  declared  not 
stories  at  all. 

It  is  true  they  were  not  nice  little  packages,  wrapped  and  labeled  in  the 
O.  Henry  manner.  They  were  obviously  written  by  one  who  did  not  know 
ffie~answersr~Tfaey  were  simple  little  tales  of  happenings,  things  observed 
and  felt.  There  were  no  cowboys  or  daring  wild  game  hunters.  None  of  the 
people  in  the  tales  got  lost  in  burning  deserts  or  went  seeking  the  North 
Pole.  In  my  stories  I  simply  stayed  at  home,  among  my  own  people, 
wherever  I  happened  to  be,  people  in  my  own  street.  I  think  I  must,  very 
early,  have  realized  that  this  was  my  milieu  —  that^Jq^say^  common 
everyday  American  lives.  The  ordinary  beliefs  of^the  people  about  me, 
that"  love  JasfecT  indefinitely,  that  success  meant  happiness,  simply  did  not 
seem  true  to  me. 

Things  were  always  happening.  My  eyes  began  to  see,  my  ears  to  hear. 
Most  of  our  American  storytelling  at  that  time  had  concerned  only  the  rich 
and  the  well-to-do.  I  was  a  storyteller  but  not  yet  a  writer  of  stories.  As  I 
came  of  a  poor  family,  older  men  were  always  repeating  to  me  the  old 
saying:  — 

"Get  money.  Money  makes  the  mare  go." 

For  a  time  I  was  a  laborer.  As  I  had  a  passion  for  fast  trotting  and  pac- 
ing horses,  I  worked  about  race  tracks.  I  became  a  soldier,  I  got  into 
business. 

I  knew,  often  quite  intensively,  Negro  swipes  about  race  tracks,  small 
gamblers,  prize  fighters,  common  laboring  men  and  women.  There  was  a 
violent,  dangerous  man,  said  to  be  a  killer.  One  night  he  walked  and  talked 
to  me  and  became  suddenly  tender.  I  was  forced  to  realize  that  all  sorts  of 
emotions  went  on  in  all  sorts  of  people.  A  young  man  who  seemed  out- 
wardly a  very  clod  suddenly  began  to  run  wildly  in  the  moonlight.  Once 
I  was  walking  in  a  wood  and  heard  the  sound  of  a  man  weeping.  I  stopped, 
looked,  and  listened.  There  was  a  farmer  who,  because  of  ill  luck,  bad 
weather,  and  perhaps  even  poor  management,  had  lost  his  farm.  He  had 
gone  to  work  in  a  factory  in  town,  but,  having  a  day  off,  had  returned 
secretly  to  the  fields  he  loved.  He  was  on  his  knees  by  a  low  fence,  looking 
across  the  fields  in  which  he  had  worked  from  boyhood.  He  and  I  were 
employed  at  the  time  in  the  same  factory,  and  in  the  factory  he  was  a  quiet, 
smiling  man,  seemingly  satisfied  with  his  lot. 

I^bgganjto^ather  these  impressions.  There  was  a  thing  called  happiness. 
to^^d-JKhich-HMe^we^  They  never  got  to  it.  All  of  life  was 

amazingly  accidental.  Love,  moments  of  tenderness  and  despair,  came  to 
the  poor  and  the  miserable  as  to  the  rich  and  successful. 

It  began  to  seem  to  me  that  what  was  most  wanted  by  all  people  was 


116  Writer 

love,  understanding.  Our  writers,  our  storytellers,  in  wrapping  life  up  into 
neat  little  packages  were  only  betraying  life.  It  began  to  seem  to  me  that 
what  I  wanted  for  myself  most  of  all,  rather  than  so-called  success,  acclaim, 
to  be  praised  by  publishers  and  editors,  was  to  try  to  develop,  to  the  top  of 
my  bent,  my  own  capacity  to  feel,  see,  taste,  smell,  hear.  I  wanted,  as  all 
men  must  want,  to  be  a  free  man,  proud  of  my  own  manhood,  always  more 
and  more  aware  of  earth,  people,  streets,  houses,  towns,  cities.  I  wanted 
to  take  all  into  myself,  digest  what  I  could. 

I  could  not  give  the  answers,  and  so  for  a  long  time  when  my  stories 
began  to  appear,  at  first  only  in  little  highbrow  magazines,  I  was  almost 
universally  condemned  by  the  critics.  My  stories,  it  seemed,  had  no 
definite  ends.  They  were  not  conclusive  and  did  not  give  the  answers,  and 
so  I  was  called  vague.  "Groping"  was  a  favorite  term.  It  seems  I  could  not 
get  a  formula  and  stick  to  it.  I  could  not  be  smart  about  life.  When  I  wrote 
my  Winesburg  stories  —  for  the  whole  series  I  got  eighty-five  dollars  — 
such  critics  as  Mr.  Floyd  Dell  and  Henry  Mencken,  having  read  them, 
declared  they  were  not  stories.  They  were  merely,  it  seemed,  sketches. 
They  were  too  vague,  too  groping.  Some  ten  or  fifteen  years  after  Mr. 
Mencken  told  me  they  were  not  stories,  he  wrote,  telling  of  how,  when  he 
first  saw  them,  he  realized  their  strength  and  beauty.  An  imagined  con- 
versation between  us,  that  never  took  place,  was  spoken  about. 

And  for  this  I  did  not  blame  Mr.  Mencken.  He  thought  he  had  said 
what  he  now  thinks  he  said. 

There  was  a  time  when  Mr.  Dell  was,  in  a  way,  my  literary  father.  He 
and  Mr.  Waldo  Frank  had  been  the  first  critics  to  praise  some  of  my  earlier 
work.  He  was  generous  and  warm.  He,  with  Mr.  Theodore  Dreiser,  was 
instrumental  in  getting  my  first  book  published.  When  he  saw  the  Wines- 
burg  stories,  he,  however,  condemned  them  heartily.  He  was  at  that  time, 
I  believe,  deeply  under  the  influence  of  Maupassant.  He  advised  me  to 
throw  the  Winesburg  stories  away.  They  had  no  form.  They  were  not 
stories.  A  story,  he  said,  must  be  sharply  definite.  There  must  be  a  begin- 
ning and  an  end.  I  remember  very  clearly  our  conversation.  "If  you  plan 
to  go  somewhere  on  a  train  and  start  for  the  station,  but  loiter  along  the 
way,  so  that  the  train  comes  into  the  station,  stops  to  discharge  and  take 
on  passengers,  and  then  goes  on  its  way,  and  you  miss  it,  don't  blame  the 
locomotive  engineer/'  I  said.  I  daresay  it  was  an  arrogant  saying,  but 
arrogance  is  also  needed. 

And  so  I  had  written,  let  us  say,  the  Winesburg  stories.  The  publisher 
who  had  already  published  two  of  my  early  novels  refused  them,  but  at 
last  I  found  a  publisher.  The  stories  were  called  unclean,  dirty,  filthy,  but 
they  did  grow  into  the  American  consciousness,  and  presently  the  same 
critic  who  had  condemned  them  began  asking  why  I  did  not  write  more 
Winesburg  stories. 

I  am  telling  you  all  of  this,  I  assure  you,  not  out  of  bitterness.  I  have 
had  a  good  Me,  a  full,  rich  life.  I  am  still  having  a  full,  rich  life.  I  tell  it 
only  to  point  out  to  you,  a  young  writer,  filled  as  I  am  made  aware  by 


The  Writers  Aims  117 

your  letter  to  me^f  tenderness  for  life,  I  tell  it  simply  to  suggest  to  you 
plainly  'what  you  are  up  against.  For  ten  or  fifteen  years  after  I  had  written 
and  published  the  Winesburg  stories,  I  was  compelled  to  make  my  living 
outside  of  the  field  of  writing.  You  will  find  none  of  my  stories  even  yet  in 
the  great  popular  magazines  that  pay  high  prices  to  writers. 

The  Winesburg  stories,  when  first  published,  were  bitterly  condemned. 
They  were  thrown  out  of  libraries.  In  one  New  England  town,  where  three 
copies  of  the  book  had  been  bought,  they  were  publicly  burned  in  the 
public  square  of  the  town.  I  remember  a  letter  I  once  received  from  a 
woman.  She  had  been  seated  beside  me  at  the  table  of  a  friend.  "Having 
sat  beside  you  and  having  read  your  stories,  I  feel  that  I  shall  never  be 
clean  again,"  she  wrote.  I  got  many  such  letters. 

Then  a  change  came.  The  book  found  its  way  into  schools  and  colleges. 
Critics  who  had  ignored  or  condemned  the  book  now  praised  it. 

"It's  Anderson's  best  work.  It  is  the  height  of  his  genius.  He  will  never 
again  do  such  work." 

People  constantly  came  to  me,  all  saying  the  same  thing. 

"But  what  else  of  mine  have  you  read  since?" 

A  blank  look  upon  faces. 

They  had  read  nothing  else  of  mine.  For  the  most  part  they  were  simply 
repeating,  over  and  over,  an  old  phrase  picked  up. 

Now,  I  do  not  think  all  of  this  matters.  I  am  one  of  the  fortunate  ones. 
In  years  when  I  have  been  unable  to  make  a  living  with  my  pen,  there 
have  always  been  friends  ready  and  willing  to  help  me.  There  was  one  man 
who  came  to  me  in  a  year  when  I  felt,  when  I  knew,  that  I  had  done  some 
of  my  best  and  truest  work,  but  when,  no  money  coming  in,  I  was  trying  to 
sell  my  house  to  get  money  to  live. 

He  wanted,  he  said,  one  of  my  manuscripts.  "I  will  lend  you  five  thou- 
sand dollars."  He  did  lend  it,  knowing  I  could  never  return  his  money,  but 
he  did  not  deceive  me.  He  had  an  affection  for  me  as  I  had  for  him.  He 
wanted  me  to  continue  to  live  in  freedom.  I  have  found  this  sort  of  thing 
among  the  rich  as  well  as  the  poor.  My  house  where  I  live  is  filled  with 
beautiful  things,  all  given  to  me.  I  live  well  enough.  I  have  no  quarrel 
with  life.  And  I  am  only  writing  all  of  this  to  you  to  prepare  you.  In  a 
world  controlled  by  business,  why  should  we  not  expect  businessmen  to 
think  first  of  business?  """" — — * 

And  do  bear  in  mind  that  publishers  of  books,  of  magazines,  of  news- 
papers are,  first  of  all,  businessmen.  They  are  compelled  to  be. 

And  do  not  blame  them  when  they  do  not  buy  your  stories.  Do  not  be 
romantic.  There  is  no  golden  key  that  unlocks  all  doors.  There  is  only  the 
joy  of  living  as  richly  as  you  can,  always  feeling  more,  absorbing  more,  and, 
if  you  are  by  nature  a  teller  of  tales,  the  realization  that  by  faking,  trying  to 
give  people  what  they  think  they  want,  you  are  in  danger  of  dulling  and  in 
the  end  quite  destroying  what  may  be  your  own  road  into  life. 

There  will  remain  for  you,  to  be  sure,  the  matter  of  making  a  living,  and 
I  am  sorry  to  say  to  you  that  in  the  solution  of  that  problem,  for  you  and 


118  Writer 

other  young  writers,  I  am  not  interested.  That,  alas,  is  your  own  problem. 
I  am  interested  only  in  what  you  may  be  able  to  contribute  to  the  advance- 
ment of  our  mutual  craft. 

But  why  not  call  it  an  art?   That  is  what  it  is. 

Did  you  ever  hear  of  an  artist  who  had  an  easy  road  to  travel  in 
life? 

TROUTDALE,  VIRGINIA,  August  27,  1938 
To  GEORGE  FREITAG: 

Writing  can  be,  like  the  practice  of  any  other  art,  a  way  of  life.  It  is 
what  we  all  want,  to  find  a  way  to  live.  There  is  this  town,  the  people  of 
the  town  or  of  a  city  street,  trees  along  a  street,  familiar  fields,  old  houses 
with  children  playing  in  the  yard,  a  fat  prosperous-looking  man  coming  out 
of  a  big  house  set  far  back  from  the  street.  What  is  he  like? 

He  is  rich.  He  employs  a  chauffeur  to  drive  his  car.  He  cannot  help 
wondering  what  his  chauffeur  thinks  of  him.  Many  of  our  rich  people  are 
a  little  frightened  when  they  think  of  their  wealth. 

We  live  in  a  world  in  which  most  of  the  channels  of  public  expression 
are  ruled  by  the  advertisers,  and  it  is  difficult  to  write  of  human  life,  giving 
yourself  to  the  life  immediately  about  you,  without  getting  upon  forbidden 
ground. 

It  can  be  done.  Trick  writing  can  be  learned.  It  is  a  trade,  not  an  art.  It 
may  be  all  right.  Formerly  I  used  to  grow  indignant  because  so  many 
writers  seemed  to  be  selling  out.  Now  I  think  it  doesn't  matter.  I  think 
every  man  writes  as  well  as  he  can.  Ordinary  people  need  to  be  amused, 
taken  away  from  thought.  Life  itself  is  too  terribly  real  for  them.  We  hear  of 
great  statesmen,  scientists,  etc.,  who  spend  their  leisure  hours  reading  de- 
tective stories.  Why  not?  The  statesman  might  begin  thinking  of  how  he 
got  to  where  he  is.  The  scientist  had  made  some  great  discovery,  but  he  is 
using  his  knowledge  for  his  own  private  ends.  He  is  no  better  or  worse  than 
the  rest  of  us.  But  above  all  things  he  doesn't  want  to  think. 

We  live,  you  see,  in  a  thin  age.  We  can't  take  it.  There  may  have  been 
times,  periods  in  die  history  of  man,  when  man  did  face  the  moral  obliga- 
tion of  living.  In  our  age  we  can't  do  it.  Don't  blame  us  too  much. 

I  have  become  a  veteran  among  American  writers.  Where  have  the  years 
gone?  How  little  I  have  done. 

Young  writers,  new  men  among  writers,  are  always  writing  letters  to  me. 
They  come  to  see  me.  "How  can  I  write  as  I  please  and  still  make  a 
living?"  It  is  a  question  for  which  I  have  no  answer.  To  tell  the  truth, 
I  am  not  interested  in  how  you  make  a  living. 

I  am  interested  only  in  what  you  give  me,  in  how  much  you  extend  my 
own  knowledge  of  life.  You  came  from  a  different  environment.  You  were 
born  in  a  rich  or  a  well-to-do  family,  while  I  came  from  a  poor  one. 

What  was  the  tone  of  life  in  your  house?  How  did  you  feel?  What  made 
you  what  you  are? 


The  Writers  Aims  119 

There  are  a  thousand  questions  I  want  to  ask  you.  Tell  me  in  your  work. 
Tell  me.  Tell  me.  The  tales  you  tell,  the  way  you  tell  them,  the  tone,  color, 
form,  all  of  these  should  reveal  yourself  to  me.  Give  me  a  little  of  yourself. 
Extend  a  little  my  own  knowledge,  my  own  capacity  for  feeling,  for  un- 
derstanding.  I  am  a  lustful  man.  I  want  everything.  I  knew  a  painter  once 
who  said  to  me,  "I  want  to  make  love  to  a  thousand,  a  hundred  thousand 
women."  I  understand  him.  He  didn't  really  want  to  bed  the  women.  He 
wanted  to  go  into  them,  penetrate  into  the  mystery  of  women.  It  was  be- 
cause of  something  he  wanted  in  his  art. 

It  seems  to  me  that  we  shall  have  more  and  more  writing.  People,  it 
seems  to  me,  are  becoming  more  conscious  of  thinness.  Now[a]days  I  my- 
self no  longer  hope  or  want  to  be  a  popular  writer.  I  write  for  myself  and 
for  other  writers.  It  doesn't  matter  to  me  now  that  I  am  often  misunder- 
stood. I  have  come  to  realize  that  I  have  dreadful  limitations.  Once  I 
thought,  I  will  write  so  well,  so  clearly,  will  tell  my  tales  so  clearly,  with 
such  verve  and  gusto  that  everyone  must  accept  me,  but  now  I  do  not  care 
for  such  acceptance.  If  you  are  mine,  I  cannot  lose  you.  If  I  am  yours, 
I  will  remain  yours. 

It  is  a  way  of  making  love.  It  is  a  way  of  losing  self.  It  must  be  that  the 
painter,  as  he  paints,  becomes  always  more  and  more  conscious  of  nature, 
its  moods,  of  the  strange  beauty  coming  unexpectedly  out  of  what  seems 
to  others  commonplace  scenes.  Why  should  I  care  whether  you,  the  young 
writer,  have  had  your  breakfast,  whether  or  not  you  have  money  to  pay 
your  rent  or  buy  a  car?  I  care  only  that  you  may  broaden  my  own  vision, 
increase  my  own  capacity  to  feel,  add  a  little  to  my  understanding  of  others. 


Why  I  Wrote  about  Bullfights 

£rmst  Hemingway  •  1898— 


These  are  the  opening  paragraphs  of  Hemingway's  magnificent  ex- 
position of  bullfighting,  Death  in  the  Afternoon  (1932).  Here  the 
artistic  purpose  he  has  faithfully  followed  through  his  distinguished 
career  in  fiction  is  directly  and  simply  stated. 

Ax  THE  FIRST  BULLFIGHT  I  ever  went  to  I  expected  to  be  horrified  and  per- 
haps sickened  by  what  I  had  been  told  would  happen  to  the  horses.  Every- 
thing I  had  read  about  the  bull  ring  insisted  on  that  point;  most  people  who 
wrote  of  it  condemned  bullfighting  outright  as  a  stupid  brutal  business, 

Reprinted  from  Death  in  the  Afternoon  by  Ernest  Hemingway.  Copyright,  1932,  by 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons.    Used  by  permission  of  the  publishers. 


120  Writer 

but  even  those  that  spoke  well  of  it  as  an  exhibition  of  skill  and  as  a 
spectacle  deplored  the  use  of  the  horses  and  were  apologetic  about  the 
whole  thing.  The  killing  of  the  horses  in  the  ring  was  considered  indefen- 
sible. I  suppose,  from  a  modern  moral  point  of  view,  that  is,  a  Christian 
point  of  view,  the  whole  bullfight  is  indefensible;  there  is  certainly  much 
cruelty,  there  is  always  danger,  either  sought  or  unlooked  for,  and  there  is 
always  death,  and  I  should  not  try  to  defend  it  now,  only  to  tell  honestly 
the  things  I  have  found  true  about  it.  To  do  this  I  must  be  altogether  frank, 
or  try  to  be,  and  if  those  who  read  this  decide  with  disgust  that  it  is  written 
by  some  one  who  lacks  their,  the  readers',  fineness  of  feeling  I  can  only 
plead  that  this  may  be  true.  But  whoever  reads  this  can  only  truly  make 
such  a  judgment  when  he,  or  she,  has  seen  the  things  that  are  spoken  of 
and  knows  truly  what  their  reactions  to  them  would  be. 

Once  I  remember  Gertrude  Stein  talking  of  bullfights  spoke  of  her  ad- 
miration for  Joselito  and  showed  me  some  pictures  of  him  in  the  ring  and 
of  herself  and  Alice  Toklas  sitting  in  the  first  row  of  the  wooden  barreras  at 
the  bull  ring  at  Valencia  with  Joselito  and  his  brother  Gallo  below,  and 
I  had  just  come  from  the  Near  East,  where  the  Greeks  broke  the  legs  of 
their  baggage  and  transport  animals  and  drove  and  shoved  them  off  the 
quay  into  the  shallow  water  when  they  abandoned  the  city  of  Smyrna, 
and  I  remember  saying  that  I  did  not  like  the  bullfights  because  of  the 
poor  horses.  I  was  trying  to  write  then  and  I  found  the  greatest  difficulty, 
aside  from  knowing  truly  what  you  really  felt,  rather  than  what  you  were 
supposed  to  feel,  and  had  been  taught  to  feel,  was  to  put  down  what 
in  action;  _what  the  .actual  things  were  which  produced 
^  emotionrthat  youTexpenenced.  In  writing  for  a  newspaper  you  told 
what  happened  and,  with  "one  trick  and  another,  you  communicated  the 
emotion  aided  by  the  element  of  timeliness  which  gives  a  certain  emotion 
to  any  account  of  something  that  has  happened  on  that  day;  but  the  real 
thing,  the  sequence  of  motion  and  fact  which  made  the  emotion  and  which 
would  be  as  valid  in  a  year  or  in  ten  years  or,  with  luck  and  if  you  stated 
it  purely  enough,  always,  was  beyond  me  and  I  was  working  very  hard 
to  try  to  get  it.  The  only  place  where  you  could  see  life  and  death,  i.e., 
violent  death  now  that  the  wars  were  over,  was  in  the  bull  ring  and  I  wanted 
very  much  to  go  to  Spain  where  I  could  study  it.  I  was  trying  to  learn  to 
write,  commencing  witKTKe~SlifipIes*t  thingvSnehone  of  the  simplest  things 
of  all  and  the^  most ^fundamental  is  violent/  death)  It  has  none  of  the  com- 
plications of  death  by  diseaseTof  soncallea  nSEural  death,  or  the  death  of 
a  friend  or  some  one  you  have  loved  or  have  hated,  but  it  is  death  never- 
theless, one  of  the  subjects  that  a  man  may  write  of.  I  had  read  many 
books  in  which,  when  the  author  tried  to  convey  it,  he  only  produced  a 
blur,  and  I  decided  that  this  was  because  either  the  author  had  never  seen 
it  clearly  or  at  the  moment  of  it,  he  had  physically  or  mentally  shut  his 
eyes,  as  one  might  do  if  he  saw  a  child  that  he  could  not  possibly  reach  or 
aid,  about  to  be  struck  by  a  train.  In  such  a  case  I  suppose  he  would  prob- 


The  Writer's  Aims  121 

ably  be  justified  in  shutting  his  eyes  as  the  mere  fact  of  the  child  being 
about  to  be  struck  by  the  train  was  all  that  he  could  convey,  the  actual 
striking  would  be  an  anti-climax,  so  that  the  moment  before  striking  might 
be  as  far  as  he  could  represent.  But  in  the  case  of  an  execution  by  a  firing 
squad,  or  a  hanging,  this  is  not  true,  and  if  these  very  simple  things  were 
to  be  made  permanent,  as,  say,  Goya  tried  to  make  them  in  Los  Desastros  de 
la  Guerra,  it  could  not  be  done  with  any  shutting  of  the  eyes.  I  had  seen 
certain  things,  certain  simple  things  of  this  sort  that  I  remembered,  but 
through  taking  part  in  them,  or,  in  other  cases,  having  to  write  of  them 
immediately  after  and  consequently  noticing  the  things  I  needed  for  instant 
recording,  I  had  never  been  able  to  study  them  as  a  man  might,  for  in- 
stance, study  the  death  of  his  father  or  the  hanging  of  some  one,  say,  that 
he  did  not  know  and  would  not  have  to  write  of  immediately  after  for  the 
first  edition  of  an  afternoon  newspaper. 

So  I  went  to  Spain  to  see  bullfights  and  to  try  to  write  about  them  for 
myself.  I  thought  they  would  be  simple  and  barbarous  and  cruel  and  that 
I  would  not  like  them,  but  that  I  would  see  certain  definite  action  which 
would  give  me  the  feeling  of  life  and  death  that  I  was  working  for.  I  found 
the  definite  action;  but  the  bullfight  was  so  far  from  simple  and  I  liked  it 
so  much  that  it  was  much  too  complicated  for  my  then  equipment  for  writ- 
ing to  deal  with  and,  aside  from  four  very  short  sketches,  I  was  not  able 
to  write  anything  about  it  for  five  years  —  and  I  wish  I  would  have  waited 
ten.  However,  if  I  had  waited  long  enough  I  probably  never  would  have 
written  anything  at  all  since  there  is  a  tendency  when  you  really  begin  to 
learn  something  about  a  thing  not  to  want  to  write  about  it  but  rather  to 
keep  on  learning  about  it  always  and  at  no  time,  unless  you  are  very  egotis- 
tical, which,  of  course,  accounts  for  many  books,  will  you  be  able  to  say: 
now  I  know  all  about  this  and  will  write  about  it.  Certainly  I  do  not  say 
that  now;  every  year  I  know  there  is  more  to  learn,  but  I  know  some  things 
which  may  be  interesting  now,  and  I  may  be  away  from  the  bullfights  for  a 
long  time  and  I  might  as  well  write  what  I  know  about  them  now. 


'To  Find  Its  Meaning" 

Robert  'Browning  •  i8i2-i889 


In  the  dramatic  monologue  Fra  Lippo  Lippi  (1855),  from  which 
these  lines  are  taken,  a  painter-monk  of  the  early  Renaissance  in  Italy 
expounds  the  theory  of  art  that  leads  him  to  paint  things  as  he  sees 
them,  "realistically,"  rather  than  in  a  way  that  "instigates  to  prayer." 
He  loves  the  physical  things  of  this  world  too  much  to  blur  them  for 
other-wordly  purposes. 

.  .  .  YOU'VE  seen  the  world 

—  The  beauty  and  the  wonder  and  the  power, 

The  shapes  of  things,  their  colors,  lights  and  shades, 
Changes,  surprises,  —  and  God  made  it  all! 

—  For  what?   Do  you  feel  thankful,  aye  or  no, 
For  this  fair  town's  face,  yonder  river's  line, 
The  mountain  round  it  and  the  sky  above, 
Much  more  the  figures  of  man,  woman,  child, 
These  are  the  frame  to?    What's  it  all  about? 
To  be  passed  over,  despised?  or  dwelt  upon, 
Wondered  at?  oh,  this  last  of  coursel  —  you  say. 
But  why  not  do  as  well  as  say,  —  paint  these 
Just  as  they  are,  careless  what  comes  of  it? 
God's  works  —  paint  any  one,  and  count  it  crime 
To  let  a  truth  slip.    Don't  object,  "His  works 

Are  here  already;  nature  is  complete: 
Suppose  you  reproduce  her  —  (which  you  can't) 
There's  no  advantage!  you  must  beat  her,  then." 
For,  don't  you  mark?  we're  made  so  that  we  love 
First  when  we  see  them  painted,  things  we  have  passed 
Perhaps  a  hundred  times  nor  cared  to  see; 
And  so  they  are  better,  painted  —  better  to  us, 
Which  is  the  same  thing.    Art  was  given  for  that; 
God  uses  us  to  help  each  other  so, 
Lending  our  minds  out.    Have  you  noticed,  now, 
Your  cullion's  hanging  face?    A  bit  of  chalk, 
And  trust  me  but  you  should,  though!    How  much  more, 
If  I  drew  higher  things  with  the  same  truth! 
That  were  to  take  the  Prior's  pulpit-place, 
Interpret  God  to  all  of  you!    Oh,  oh, 
It  makes  me  mad  to  see  what  men  shall  do 
And  we  in  our  graves!    This  world's  no  blot  for  us, 
Nor  blank;  it  means  intensely,  and  means  good: 
To  find  its  meaning  is  my  meat  and  drink. 

122 


"  Terence,  This  Is  Stupid  Stuff  " 

Jf.   £.  IHousman  •  485P~493<5 


You  will  have  no  trouble  understanding  the  writer's  aim  set  forth 
here  if  you  notice  that  the  quotation  marks  indicate  two  speakers  in  the 
poem;  a  poet's  friend  accuses  him  of  writing  "stupid  stuff"  that  is  just 
too  melancholy  —  he  wants  "a  tune  to  dance  to";  the  poet,  Terence, 
replies  that  there  are  better  means  of  cheering  yourself  up  than  poetry, 
and  goes  on  to  justify  his  writing  poems  that  dwell  on  the  dark  side  of 
life.  Housman's  famous  book,  A  Shropshire  Lad  (1896),  from  which 
this  poem  is  taken,  pipes  many  melancholy  but  lovely  lyrics  that  carry 
out  this  purpose. 

"TERENCE,  this  is  stupid  stuff: 
You  eat  your  victuals  fast  enough; 
There  can't  be  much  amiss,  'tis  clear, 
To  see  the  rate  you  drink  your  beer. 
But  oh,  good  Lord,  the  verse  you  make, 
It  gives  a  chap  the  belly-ache. 
The  cow,  the  old  cow,  she  is  dead; 
It  sleeps  well,  the  horned  head: 
We  poor  lads,  'tis  our  turn  now 
To  hear  such  tunes  as  killed  the  cow. 
Pretty  friendship  'tis  to  rhyme 
Your  friends  to  death  before  their  time 
Moping  melancholy  mad: 
Come,  pipe  a  tune  to  dance  to,  lad." 

Why,  if  'tis  dancing  you  would  be, 
There's  brisker  pipes  than  poetry. 
Say,  for  what  were  hop-yards  meant, 
Or  why  was  Burton  built  on  Trent? 
Oh  many  a  peer  of  England  brews 
Livelier  liquor  than  the  Muse, 
And  malt  does  more  than  Milton  can 
To  justify  God's  ways  to  man. 
Ale,  man,  ale's  the  stuff  to  drink 
For  fellows  whom  it  hurts  to  think: 
Look  into  the  pewter  pot 
To  see  the  world  as  the  world's  not. 

From  A  Shropshire  Lad  by  A.  E.  Housman.  Reprinted  by  permission  of  Henry  Holt 
and  Company,  Inc.,  U.S.A.,  and  by  permission  of  the  Society  of  Authors  as  literary 
representative  of  the  Trustees  of  the  Estate  of  the  late  A.  E.  Housman,  and  Messrs. 
Jonathan  Cape  Ltd.,  publishers  of  A.  E.  Housman's  Collected  Poems. 

123 


124  Writer 


And  faith,  'tis  pleasant  till  'tis  past: 

The  mischief  is  that  'twill  not  last. 

Oh  I  have  been  to  Ludlow  fair 

And  left  my  necktie  God  knows  where, 

And  carried  half-way  home,  or  near, 

Pints  and  quarts  of  Ludlow  beer: 

Then  the  world  seemed  none  so  bad, 

And  I  myself  a  sterling  lad; 

And  down  in  lovely  muck  I've  lain, 

Happy  till  I  woke  again. 

Then  I  saw  the  morning  sky: 

Heigho,  the  tale  was  all  a  lie; 

The  world,  it  was  the  old  world  yet, 

I  was  I,  my  things  were  wet, 

And  nothing  now  remained  to  do 

But  begin  the  game  anew. 

Therefore,  since  the  world  has  still 
Much  good,  but  much  less  good  than  ill, 
And  while  the  sun  and  moon  endure 
Luck's  a  chance,  but  trouble's  sure, 
I'd  face  it  as  a  wise  man  would, 
And  train  for  ill  and  not  for  good. 
Tis  true,  the  stuff  I  bring  for  sale 
Is  not  so  brisk  a  brew  as  ale: 
Out  of  a  stem  that  scored  the  hand 
I  wrung  it  in  a  weary  land. 
But  take  it:  if  the  smack  is  sour, 
The  better  for  the  embittered  hour; 
It  should  do  good  to  heart  and  head 
When  your  soul  is  in  my  soul's  stead; 
And   I  will  friend  you,   if  I  may, 
In  the  dark  and  cloudy  day. 

There  was  a  king  reigned  in  the  East: 
There,  when  kings  will  sit  to  feast, 
They  get  their  fill  before  they  think 
With  poisoned  meat  and  poisoned  drink. 
He  gathered  all  that  springs  to  birth 
From  the  many-venomed  earth; 
First  a  little,  thence  to  more, 
He  sampled  all  her  killing  store; 
And  easy,  smiling,  seasoned  sound, 
Sate  the  king  when  healths  went  round. 


The  Writers  Aims  125 

They  put  arsenic  in  his  meat 

And  stared  aghast  to  watch  him  eat; 

They  poured  strychnine  in  his  cup 

And  shook  to  see  him  drink  it  up: 

They  shook,  they  stared  as  white's  their  shirt: 

Them  it  was  their  poison  hurt. 

—  I  tell  the  tale  that  I  heard  told. 

Mithridates,  he  died  old. 


Sonnet  55 

"William  Shakespeare  •  i564-46*6 

Several  of  the  sonnets  in  Shakespeare's  famous  sequence  addressed 
to  his  young  friend  and  to  his  "Dark  Lady"  promise  to  give  lasting  fame 
to  the  one  celebrated.  This  of  course  has  been  one  of  the  ma/or  aims 
of  writing,  "to  embalm  and  treasure  up,"  as  Milton  said,  "to  a  life  be- 
yond life"  those  things  which  the  writer  cherishes. 

NOT  MARBLE,  nor  the  gilded  monuments 

Of  princes,  shall  outlive  this  powerful  rhyme; 

But  you  shall  shine  more  bright  in  these  contents 

Than  unswept  stone  besmeared  with  sluttish  time. 

When  wasteful  war  shall  statues  overturn, 

And  broils  root  out  the  work  of  masonry, 

Nor  Mars  his  sword  nor  war's  quick  fire  shall  burn 

The  living  record  of  your  memory. 

'Gainst  death  and  all-oblivious  enmity 

Shall  you  pace  forth;  your  praise  shall  still  find  room 

Even  in  the  eyes  of  all  posterity 

That  wear  this  world  out  to  the  ending  doom. 

So,  till  the  judgment  that  yourself  arise, 

You  live  in  this,  and  dwell  in  lovers'  eyes. 


"Perhaps  I  can  make  it  clearer 
with  a  couple  of  examples." 


Some  Precepts 
and  Examples 

1.  BEGINNING  WITH  TALK 


On  the  Differences  Between 
Writing  and  Speaking    *» 

"William  Jiazlitt  ••  4778-4830 


Logically,  speaking  and  writing  go  together,  since  both  involve  ex- 
pressing, or  putting  forth,  our  thoughts  in  words.  So,  offhand,  one 
would  suppose  that  a  person  who  can  speak  well  can  also  write  well,  and 
vice  versa;  that  if,  in  Leacock's  words,  one  "has  something  to  say  and 
knows  how  to  say  it,"  it  makes  no  difference  whether  he  is  speaking  or 
writing.  In  important  ways  the  supposition  is  correct,  but  in  other  im- 
portant ways,  which  Hazlitt  explores  in  this  essay,  it  is  not.  Some  ex- 
periments even  seem  to  show  that  there  may  be  more  correlation  be- 
tween ability  in  writing  and  mathematics  than  between  writing  and 
speaking/  After  testing  the  differences  Hazlitt  points  out  against  your 
own  experience,  you  might  try  to  think  out  the  similarities. 

"Some  minds  are  proportioned  to  that  which  may  be  dispatched  at 
once,  or  within  a  short  return  of  time;  others  to  that  which  begins 
afar  off  and  is  to  be  won  with  length  of  pursuit."  —  BACON 

IT  is  A  COMMON  OBSERVATION  that  few  persons  can  be  found  who  speak  and 
write  equally  well.  Not  only  is  it  obvious  that  the  two  faculties  do  not  al- 
ways go  together  in  the  same  proportions,  but  they  are  not  unusually  in 
direct  opposition  to  each  other.  We  find  that  the  greatest  authors  often 

126 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  127 

make  the  worst  company  in  the  world,  and  again  some  of  the  liveliest  fel- 
lows imaginable  in  conversation  or  extempore  speaking  seem  to  lose  all 
this  vivacity  and  spirit  the  moment  they  set  pen  to  paper.  For  this  a  greater 
degree  of  quickness  or  slowness  of  parts,  education,  habit,  temper,  turn  of 
mind  and  a  variety  of  collateral  and  predisposing  causes  are  necessary  to 
account.  The  subject  is  at  least  curious  and  worthy  of  an  attempt  to  explain 
it.  I  shall  endeavor  to  illustrate  the  difference  by  familiar  examples  rather 
than  by  analytical  reasonings.  The  philosopher  of  old  was  not  unwise  who 
defined  motion  by  getting  up  and  walking. 

The  great  leading  distinction  between  writing  and  speaking  is,  that  more 
time  is  allowed  for  the  one  than  the  other,  and  hence  different  faculties  are 
required  for,  and  different  objects  attained  by  each.  He  is  properly  the  best 
speaker  who  can  collect  together  the  greatest  number  of  apposite  ideas  at 
a  moment's  warning;  he  is  properly  the  best  writer  who  can  give  utterance 
to  the  greatest  quantity  of  valuable  knowledge  in  the  course  of  his  whole 
life.  The  chief  requisite  for  the  one,  then,  appears  to  be  quickness  and 
facility  of  perception  —  for  the  other,  patience  of  soul  and  a  power  in- 
creasing with  the  difficulties  it  has  to  master.  He  cannot  be  denied  to  be 
an  expert  speaker,  a  lively  companion,  who  is  never  at  a  loss  for  something 
to  say  on  every  occasion  or  subject  that  offers.  He,  by  the  same  rule,  will 
make  a  respectable  writer  who,  by  dint  of  study,  can  find  out  anything 
good  to  say  upon  any  one  point  that  has  not  been  touched  upon  before,  or 
who  by  asking  for  time,  can  give  the  most  complete  and  comprehensive 
view  of  any  question.  The  one  must  be  done  off-hand,  at  a  single  blow;  the 
other  can  only  be  done  by  a  repetition  of  blows,  by  having  time  to  think 
and  do  better. 

In  speaking,  less  is  required  of  you,  if  you  only  do  it  at  once  with  grace 
and  spirit;  in  writing,  you  stipulate  for  all  that  you  are  capable  of,  but  you 
have  the  choice  of  your  own  time  and  subject. 

We  see  persons  of  that  standard  or  texture  of  mind  that  they  can  do 
nothing  but  on  the  spur  of  the  occasion;  if  they  have  time  to  deliberate 
they  are  lost.  There  are  others  who  have  no  resource,  who  cannot  advance 
a  step  by  any  efforts  or  assistance  beyond  a  successful  arrangement  of  com- 
monplaces; but  these  they  have  always  at  command,  at  everybody's  serv- 
ice. Set  the  same  person  to  write  a  common  paragraph  and  he  cannot  get 
through  it  for  very  weariness;  ask  him  a  question,  ever  so  little  out  of  the 
common  road  and  he  stares  you  in  the  face.  What  does  all  this  bustle, 
animation,  plausibility  and  command  of  words  amount  to?  A  lively  flow 
of  animal  spirits,  a  good  deal  of  confidence,  a  communicative  turn,  and  a 
tolerably  tenacious  memory  with  respect  to  floating  opinions  and  current 
phrases.  Beyond  the  routine  of  the  daily  newspapers  and  coffee-house 
criticism,  such  persons  do  not  venture  to  think  at  all;  or  if  they  did  it  would 
be  so  much  the  worse  for  them,  for  they  would  only  be  perplexed  in  the 
attempt  and  would  perform  their  part  in  the  mechanism  of  society  with  so 
much  the  less  alacrity  and  easy  volubility. 


128  Writer 

The  most  dashing  orator  I  ever  heard  is  the  flattest  writer  I  ever  read.  In 
speaking,  he  was  like  a  volcano  vomiting  out  lava;  in  writing,  he  is  like  a 
volcano  burnt  out.  Nothing  but  the  dry  cinders,  the  hard  shell  remains. 
The  tongues  of  flame  with  which  in  haranguing  a  mixed  assembly  he  used 
to  illuminate  his  subject  and  almost  scorched  up  the  panting  air,  do  not 
appear  painted  on  the  margin  of  his  woiks.  He  was  the  model  of  a  flashy, 
powerful  demagogue  —  a  madman  blest  with  a  fit  audience. 

It  is  not  merely  that  the  same  individual  cannot  sit  down  quietly  in  his 
closet  and  produce  the  same  or  a  correspondent  effect  but  sit  down  your- 
self and  read  one  of  these  very  popular  and  electrical  effusions  (for  they 
have  been  published),  and  you  would  not  believe  it  to  be  the  same!  The 
thunder-and-lightning  mixture  of  the  orator  turns  out  a  mere  drab-colored 
suit  in  the  person  of  the  prose  writer.  We  wonder  at  the  change  and  think 
there  must  be  some  mistake,  some  legerdemain  trick  played  off  upon  us,  by 
which  what  before  appeared  so  fine  now  appears  to  be  so  worthless.  The 
deception  took  place  before;  now  it  is  removed.  The  orator's  vehemence 
of  gesture,  the  loudness  of  the  voice,  the  speaking  eye,  the  conscious  at- 
titude, the  inexplicable  dumb  show  and  noise,  —  all  "those  brave  sublunary 
things  that  made  his  raptures  clear," —  are  no  longer  there  and  without 
these  he  is  nothing  —  his  "fire  and  ire"  turn  to  puddle  and  ditch-water,  and 
the  god  of  eloquence  and  of  our  idolatry  sinks  into  a  common  mortal,  or  an 
image  of  lead,  with  a  few  labels,  nicknames,  and  party  watchwords  stuck 
in  his  mouth.  The  truth  is  that  these  always  made  up  the  stock  of  his  in- 
tellectual wealth,  but  a  certain  exaggeration  and  extravagance  of  manner 
covered  the  nakedness  and  swelled  out  the  emptiness  of  the  matter. 

An  orator  can  hardly  get  beyond  commonplaces;  if  he  does  he  gets  be- 
yond his  hearers.  The  most  successful  speakers,  even  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  have  not  been  the  best  scholars  or  the  finest  writers.  Those 
speeches  that  in  general  told  the  best  at  the  time  are  not  now  readable. 
What  were  the  materials  of  which  they  were  chiefly  composed?  An  im- 
posing detail  of  passing  events,  a  formal  display  of  official  documents,  an 
appeal  to  established  maxims,  an  echo  of  popular  clamor,  some  worn-out 
metaphor  newly  vamped  up,  —  some  hackneyed  argument  used  for  the 
hundredth,  nay  thousandth  time,  to  fall  in  with  the  interests,  the  passions, 
or  prejudices  of  listening  and  devoted  admirers  —  some  truth  or  falsehood 
repeated  as  the  Shibboleth  of  party  time  out  of  mind,  which  gathers 
strength  from  sympathy  as  it  spreads,  because  it  is  understood  or  assented 
to  by  the  million,  and  finds  in  the  increased  action  of  the  minds  of  num- 
bers the  weight  and  force  of  an  instinct.  A  commonplace  does  not  leave  the 
mind  "sceptical,  puzzled,  and  undecided  in  the  moment  of  action";  "it 
gives  a  body  to  opinion  and  a  permanence  to  fugitive  belief."  It  operates 
mechanically  and  opens  an  instantaneous  and  infallible  communication 
between  the  hearer  and  speaker.  A  set  of  cant  phrases,  arranged  in  sound- 
ing sentences,  and  pronounced  "with  good  emphasis  and  discretion,"  keep 
the  gross  and  irritable  humors  of  an  audience  in  constant  fermentation,  and 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  129 

levy  no  tax  on  the  understanding.  To  give  a  reason  for  anything  is  to  breed 
a  doubt  of  it,  which  doubt  you  may  not  remove  in  the  sequel,  either  be- 
cause your  reason  may  not  be  a  good  one  or  because  the  person  to  whom  it 
is  addressed  may  not  be  able  to  comprehend  it  or  because  others  may  not 
be  able  to  comprehend  it.  He  who  offers  to  go  into  the  grounds  of  an 
acknowledged  axiom  risks  the  unanimity  of  the  company  "by  most  admired 
disorder,"  as  he  who  digs  to  the  foundation  of  a  building  to  show  its 
solidity,  risks  its  falling.  But  a  commonplace  is  enshrined  in  its  own  un- 
questioned evidence,  and  constitutes  its  own  immortal  basis. 

The  writer  must  be  original  or  he  is  nothing.  He  is  not  to  take  up  with 
ready-made  goods,  for  he  has  time  allowed  him  to  create  his  own  materials, 
and  to  make  novel  combinations  of  thought  and  fancy,  to  contend  with 
unforeseen  difficulties  of  style  and  execution,  while  we  look  on  and  admire 
the  growing  work  in  secret  and  at  leisure.  There  is  a  degree  of  finishing 
as  well  as  of  solid  strength  in  writing  which  is  not  to  be  got  at  every  day, 
and  we  can  wait  for  perfection.  The  author  owes  a  debt  to  truth  and 
nature  which  he  cannot  satisfy  at  sight,  but  he  has  pawned  his  head  on 
redeeming  it.  It  is  not  a  string  of  clap-traps  to  answer  a  temporary  or 
party  purpose  —  violent,  vulgar,  and  illiberal  —  but  general  and  lasting 
truth  that  we  require  at  his  hands.  We  go  to  him  as  pupils,  not  as  partisans. 
We  have  a  right  to  expect  from  him  profounder  views  of  things,  finer  ob- 
servations, more  ingenious  illustrations,  happier  and  bolder  expressions. 
He  is  to  give  the  choice  and  picked  results  of  a  whole  life  of  study,  what 
he  has  struck  out  in  his  most  felicitous  moods,  has  treasured  up  with  most 
pride,  has  labored  to  bring  to  light  with  most  anxiety  and  confidence  of 
success.  He  can  wait.  He  is  not  satisfied  with  a  reason  he  has  offered  for 
something;  let  him  wait  till  he  finds  a  better  reason.  There  is  some  word, 
some  phrase,  some  idiom  that  expresses  a  particular  idea  better  than  any 
other,  but  he  cannot  for  the  life  of  him  recollect  it;  let  him  wait  till  he  does. 
Is  it  strange  that  among  twenty  thousand  words  in  the  English  language  the 
one  of  all  others  that  he  most  needs  should  have  escaped  him?  There  are 
more  things  in  nature  than  there  are  words  in  the  English  language,  and 
he  must  not  expect  to  lay  rash  hands  on  them  all  at  once.  You  will  allow 
a  writer  a  year  to  think  of  a  subject;  he  should  not  put  you  off  with  a  truism 
at  last.  You  allow  him  a  year  more  to  find  out  words  for  his  thoughts;  he 
should  not  give  us  an  echo  of  all  the  fine  things  that  have  been  said  a 
hundred  times.  A  person  in  habits  of  composition  often  hesitates  in  con- 
versation for  a  particular  word;  it  is  because  he  is  in  search  of  the  best 
word  and  that  he  cannot  hit  upon.  In  writing  he  would  stop  till  it  came. 
It  is  not  true,  however,  that  the  scholar  could  avail  himself  of  a  more 
ordinary  word  if  he  chose,  or  readily  acquire  a  command  of  ordinary 
language;  for  his  associations  are  habitually  intense,  not  vague  and  shallow, 
and  words  occur  to  him  only  as  tallies  to  certain  modifications  of  feeling. 
They  are  links  in  the  chain  of  thought.  His  imagination  is  fastidious,  and 
rejects  all  those  that  are  "of  no  mark  or  likelihood." 


130  Writer 

To  conclude  this  account  with  what  perhaps  I  ought  to  have  set  out  with 
—  a  definition  of  the  character  of  an  author.  There  are  persons  who  in 
society,  in  public  intercourse,  feel  no  excitement, 

Dull  as  the  lake  that  slumbers  in  the  storm, 

but  who,  when  left  alone,  can  lash  themselves  into  a  foam.  They  are  never 
less  alone  than  when  alone.  Mount  them  on  a  dinner  table,  and  they  have 
nothing  to  say;  shut  them  up  in  a  room  to  themselves,  and  they  are  in- 
spired. They  are  "made  fierce  with  dark  keeping."  In  revenge  for  being 
tongue-tied,  a  torrent  of  words  flows  from  their  pens,  and  the  storm  which 
was  so  long  collecting  comes  down  apace.  It  never  rains  but  it  pours.  Is 
not  this  strange,  unaccountable?  Not  at  all  so.  They  have  a  real  interest, 
a  real  knowledge  of  the  subject,  and  they  cannot  summon  up  all  that  in- 
terest, or  bring  all  that  knowledge  to  bear  while  they  have  anything  else 
to  attend  to.  Till  they  can  do  justice  to  the  feeling  they  have,  they  can  do 
nothing.  For  this  they  look  into  their  own  minds,  not  in  the  faces  of  a 
gaping  multitude.  What  they  would  say  (if  they  could)  does  not  lie  at 
the  orifices  of  the  mouth  ready  for  delivery,  but  is  wrapped  in  the  folds  of 
the  heart  and  registered  in  the  chambers  of  the  brain.  In  the  sacred  cause 
of  truth  that  stirs  them  they  would  put  their  whole  strength,  their  whole 
being  into  requisition;  and  as  it  implies  a  greater  effort  to  drag  their  words 
and  ideas  from  their  lurking  places,  so  there  is  no  end  when  they  are  once 
set  in  motion.  The  whole  of  a  man's  thoughts  and  feelings  cannot  lie  on 
the  surface,  made  up  for  use;  but  the  whole  must  be  a  greater  quantity,  a 
mightier  power,  if  they  could  be  got  at,  layer  upon  layer,  and  brought  into 
play  by  the  levers  of  imagination  and  reflection.  Such  a  person  then  sees 
farther  and  feels  deeper  than  most  others.  He  plucks  up  an  argument  by 
the  roots,  he  tears  out  the  very  heart  of  his  subject.  He  has  more  pride  in 
conquering  the  difficulties  of  a  question,  than  vanity  in  courting  the  favor 
of  an  audience.  He  wishes  to  satisfy  himself  before  he  pretends  to  en- 
lighten the  public. 


Everybody's  Listening!    *> 

'Bess  Sondel  •  1894- 


Just  as  speaking  and  writing  are  logically  paired,  so  are  listening  and 
reading.  Curiously,  however,  we  have  usually  assumed  that  listening  is 
a  passive  process,  that  we  can't  help  listening,  and  that  somehow  all  the 
difficulties  we  have  in  reading  disappear  when  we  take  in  words  by  ear 
rather  than  by  eye.  Recently  students  of  communication  have  begun  to 
realize  the  importance  of  listening  —  after  all,  most  of  us  listen  more 
than  we  read,  speak,  or  write.  In  this  popular  article,  Bess  Sondel  lists 
five  basic  abilities  of  an  active  good  listener.  Consider  the  comparison 
between  listening  and  reading,  as  you  did  between  speaking  and  writ- 
ing in  Hazlitt's  essay.  Wherein  are  the  techniques  of  listening  and 
reading  similar?  Wherein  different? 

SOME  PEOPLE  think  a  good  listener  is  a  person  who  pretends  to  be  interested 
while  the  other  fellow  mows  him  down.  This  is  certainly  a  whopper  if  there 
ever  was  one.  Listening  is  active.  Listening  is  participating  in  at  least  five 
important  ways.  You  are  a  good  listener  if  — 

1.  You  can  "see"  an  idea  when  you  hear  it. 

2.  You  can  distinguish  between  essential  points  and  details. 

3.  You  can  distinguish  between  facts  and  opinions. 

4.  You  can  distinguish  between  information  and  persuasion. 

5.  And  if  you  can  then  make  up  your  own  mind  about  what  has  been 
said. 

SEEING  AN  IDEA 

Most  people  use  a  lot  of  words  to  express  their  ideas.  They  talk  at  us 
by  the  hour  to  explain  just  one  thought.  They  lecture  from  platforms,  from 
pulpits,  from  soapboxes,  from  armchairs.  They  toss  around  the  same  idea 
on  the  radio,  in  town  hall,  at  a  conference  table,  at  a  club  meeting.  One 
good  idea  may  certainly  be  worth  all  those  words,  but  when  they  come  our 
way  too  fast  —  sometimes  twisted,  emotion-packed,  ill-assorted  —  they  are 
meaningful  to  us  only  if  we  can  see  the  idea  bare  as  bones.  No  matter  how 
many  words  are  used,  a  listener  should  be  able  to  sum  up  the  idea  in  one 
sentence  or  less.  If  he  can  do  that,  he  understands  what  is  being  talked 
about.  If  he  can't,  he  is  hazy  about  the  controlling  idea  that  all  those  words 
refer  to. 

You  can  see  an  idea  because  it  has  form.  An  idea  is  not  simple;  it  is 
complex,  made  up  of  parts.  To  know  what  the  parts  are  and  how  they 

Reprinted  by  permission  from  the  National  Parent-Teacher,  January,  1951. 

131 


132  Writer 

hang  together  is  to  discover  the  structure  of  the  idea.  Now  these  parts  may 
be  related  to  one  another  in  various  ways.  Notice  how  the  idea  itself 
establishes  the  relationship  between  the  parts:  "World  government  will  be 
the  means  of  attaining  the  end,  peace."  "These  operations  in  the  labora- 
tory will  cause  this  effect."  "This  problem  will  permit  of  this  solution." 
Parts  of  an  idea  may  thus  be  related  as  means  to  end,  cause  to  effect,  prob- 
lem to  solution,  and  in  many  other  ways.  Parts  may  be  related  in  time  — 
as  when  we  describe  any  operation.  Parts  may  be  related  in  space,  as 
when  we  describe  a  trip.  Parts  may  be  related  as  sections  that  make  up  a 
whole  idea:  "Arguments  for  and  arguments  against  world  government  as 
a  means  to  peace."  Here  we  have  two  parts  —  two  sections  (for  and 
against)  —  that  together  cover  the  whole  subject. 

A  good  listener  will  see  the  idea,  then,  as  something  that  has  structure 
(pattern),  as  something  with  definite  parts  which  together  make  up  the 
whole.  When  the  controlling  idea  is  discovered,  all  the  words,  however 
many  and  in  however  disorderly  a  manner  they  come,  find  their  rightful 
place  and  their  special  significance  in  relation  to  that  controlling  idea. 
There  is  order,  and  where  there  is  order  there  is  understanding. 

WHICH  PARTS  ARE  ESSENTIAL? 

This  second  point  really  explains  itself  if  you  understand  and  accept  the 
first.  After  you  boil  down  a  torrent  of  words  to  a  controlling  idea  and  after 
you  see  that  idea  as  having  structure  (pattern),  you  will  automatically  be 
able  to  distinguish  the  essential  points  from  the  details. 

The  essential  points  are  summed  up  in  the  controlling  idea.  All  amplifica- 
tion of  these  parts  —  every  description  and  every  explanation  of  a  part, 
every  example  used  to  illustrate  a  part,  every  fact  or  opinion  that  is  called 
on  to  bear  witness  for  or  against  a  part  —  is  a  detail.  These  are  details  be- 
cause the  speaker  chooses  them  from  several  possibilities,  each  of  which 
would  do  perhaps  equally  well.  In  talking  to  you,  for  instance,  he  would 
choose  an  example  that  fits  into  your  experience  and  your  interests. 

The  ability  to  distinguish  between  essentials  and  details  is  a  great  ad- 
vantage to  a  listener.  Indeed  it  is  indispensable  to  understanding,  and  it  is 
the  first  requisite  for  judging,  since  judgment  without  understanding  is 
worthless. 

As  a  listener,  and  as  a  participator  too,  the  person  who  can  distinguish 
between  essentials  and  details  will  know  at  once  whether  a  point  is  relevant 
or  not  relevant  to  a  discussion.  If  it  doesn't  fit  into  the  structural  pattern, 
it  is  obviously  irrelevant.  A  good  listener  notices  when  a  speaker  stresses 
details  to  the  neglect  of  essentials  and  is  soon  bored  by  this  untidy  and 
inefficient  procedure. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  advantage  in  being  able  to  make  this  distinction  is 
that  you  hear  words,  so  to  speak,  in  perspective.  The  essentials  stand  out 
in  bold  outlines  against  a  background  of  details.  There  is  no  confusion. 
All  things  fall  into  place  and  assume  tjleir  proper  degree  of  importance. 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  133 

It  is  the  essentials  that  make  the  structural  plan.  Everything  else  is  a 
detail  that  must  fall  into  place  in  that  plan.  Details  are  fillers.  A  detail  is 
a  detail  because  we  can  introduce  as  many  relevant  ones  as  we  wish  with- 
out disturbing  the  structural  pattern  of  the  controlling  idea. 

FACT  AND  OPINION 

A  fact  is  a  statement  that  can  be  checked.  There  are  historical  facts, 
observable  facts,  and  experimental  facts.  Historical  facts  come  to  us  by 
indirect  evidence.  Observable  facts  can  be  directly  perceived  by  qualified 
witnesses.  Experimental  facts  are  subject  to  control.  All  facts  are  objective 
—  that  is,  impersonal. 

An  opinion  cannot  be  checked;  it  is  personal.  An  opinion  is  a  guess,  a 
hunch,  a  projection  into  the  unknown.  It  is  an  opinion  because  all  the  facts 
are  not  in. 

Opinions,  however,  should  not  be  depreciated.  In  some  ways  they 
actually  go  beyond  facts.  There  is  a  vastly  important  area  in  our  lives  in 
which  opinions  play  the  dominant  role.  Every  time  we  look  into  the  future 
in  an  effort  to  shape  our  lives,  we  depend  on  opinions,  for  nobody  can 
predict  with  certainty  about  human  beings.  Every  time  we  attempt  to 
judge  facts,  every  time  we  call  facts  better,  worse,  right,  wrong,  beautiful, 
ugly,  moral,  unethical,  and  so  on,  we  depend  on  opinion.  Every  judgment 
is  an  opinion.  And  every  time  we  attempt  to  advance  into  the  realm  of  the 
not-yet-factually-known,  we  depend  on  opinion. 

So  let  us  not  depreciate  opinions.  As  listeners  we  must  try  instead  to 
find  a  method  for  evaluating  the  worth  of  an  opinion.  The  first  step,  of 
course,  is  to  be  able  to  distinguish  between  a  fact  and  an  opinion.  In  our 
efforts  to  do  this,  these  questions  are  relevant:  "Is  the  statement  personal 
or  not  personal?"  "Can  it  be  checked?"  "Can  it  be  verified?"  If  the  state- 
ment is  impersonal  and  subject  to  verification,  it  is  a  fact.  Even  so,  it  may 
be  worthless  to  you  as  a  listener. 

Unless  a  fact  is  hitched  to  an  idea,  it  floats.  Don't  try  to  listen  for 
isolated  facts.  Don't  try  to  remember  them.  Ask  yourself,  rather,  "What 
idea  holds  these  facts  together?"  When  you  see  that,  you  will  automatically 
grasp  the  significance  of  the  fact  to  the  idea  which  it  supports. 

Now  as  to  opinions.  When  some  of  the  facts  are  not  available  and  all 
the  facts  are  not  in,  when  a  statement  has  its  personal  side  and  therefore 
cannot  be  checked,  you  will  of  course  call  this  an  opinion.  A  good  opinion 
rests  on  the  facts  that  are  in:  "He's  a  liarl"  "How  do  you  know?"  "I  saw 
him  take  the  box,  and  he  said  he  didn't." 

A  sharp  listener  will  soon  discover  that  many  opinions  rest  on  other 
opinions,  without  ever  getting  down  to  facts,  thus:  "He's  a  liar!"  "How  do 
you  know?"  "He  never  was  any  good.  When  he  was  a  kid  he  was  always 
in  trouble.  All  the  kids  in  that  neighborhood  were  wild.  Nobody  trusts 
him."  All  opinion  —  and  not  good  opinion  at  that.  There  is  not  one  fact  to 
substantiate  these  judgments! 


134  Writer 

Notice  the  words  never  and  always.  These  are  traps  for  falsification,  to 
say  nothing  of  prejudice.  These  words  make  no  allowance  for  change.  Yet 
in  human  behavior  the  one  indisputable  scientific  fact  is  that  of  constant, 
inescapable,  and  largely  unpredictable  change.  All  life  is  a  process  of 
change,  and  it  never  repeats  itself  exactly. 

Then  notice  the  words  all  and  nobody.  When  applied  to  human  behavior 
these  words  deny  the  scientific  fact  that  every  living  being  is  absolutely 
unique.  They  assume  an  absolute  exactness  —  in  some  respect  —  of  every- 
one. This  is  a  tall  order  and  one  that  cannot  be  filled.  Such  words  are 
signals  to  the  listener  for  extra  alertness.  Falsehood  and  prejudice  lurk  in 
their  seeming  authority. 

A  good  opinion  makes  no  pretense  to  be  anything  else.  We  listen  with 
respect  when  a  speaker  says,  "This  is  my  opinion  now.  Maybe  111  revise 
it  tomorrow  when  we  have  more  information.  But  today,  with  the  facts  we 
have,  I  look  at  it  this  way."  We  listen  with  skepticism  to  the  dogmatic 
speaker  who  forgets  that  opinions  are  subject  to  revision  in  the  light  of 
further  knowledge.  We  listen  with  downright  distrust  to  the  speaker  who 
tries  to  palm  off  his  opinions  as  facts. 

One  of  the  slickest  ways  of  doing  this  —  palming  off  a  poor  opinion  as 
a  fact  —  is  to  use  the  scientific  device  of  classification.  When  scientists 
classify,  they  are  interested  in  the  similarities  of  the  things  they  are  classi- 
fying, not  in  the  differences  left  out.  But  to  classify  people,  without  regard 
to  their  individual  differences,  to  throw  them  into  sacks  and  label  them  is 
a  risky  business  that  leads  to  false  and  prejudicial  opinions.  A  good 
listener  will  remember  the  differences  left  out  when  human  beings  are 
classified  according  to  race,  color,  political  affiliations,  religion,  occupation 
—  anything!  Distinguish  between  facts  and  opinions,  but  take  the  further 
step  of  distinguishing  between  good  opinions  and  ungrounded  opinions. 

WHAT'S  THE  INTENTION? 

Every  time  a  person  speaks,  he  speaks  with  a  purpose.  Maybe  he  isn't 
aware  of  his  purpose,  but  it's  there.  Otherwise  why  would  he  speak  to  you? 
Maybe  he  wants  to  amuse  you.  Maybe  he  wants  to  inform  you.  Maybe  he 
wants  you  to  like  him  or  trust  him  or  sympathize  with  him.  Maybe  he 
wants  you  to  take  a  stand  for  him  and  with  him.  Maybe  he  wants  you  to 
do  something. 

Words  are  used  for  an  infinite  variety  of  purposes,  but  we  can  boil  these 
down  to  three:  (1)  Speakers  want  their  listeners  to  understand  them. 

(2)  They  want  their  listeners  to  take  an  attitude,  to  feel  something. 

(3)  They  want  their  listeners  to  do  something. 

When  a  speaker  asks  only  for  understanding,  his  words  are  informative. 
When  he  asks  for  a  feeling  response  or  an  action  response,  or  both,  his 
words  are  persuasive.  The  distinction  is  a  fine  one,  for  sometimes  in- 
formation in  itself  is  persuasive. 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  135 

Information  is  presented  in  words  that  have  a  factual  basis.  If  the 
speaker  asks  only  for  understanding  (as  far  as  you  can  determine  from  his 
tone,  his  manner,  and  his  words),  then  you  will  call  his  words  informative 
terms.  When  you  hear  words  that  appraise  things  —  that  call  things  better, 
worse,  useful,  not  useful,  right,  wrong,  beautiful,  ugly  —  you  will  be  a  good 
listener  if  you  recognize  these  statements  as  opinions,  as  judgments.  And 
you  will  know  that  they  have  their  personal  side.  The  personal  side  in- 
volves you,  the  listener,  for  those  words  are  intended  to  arouse  an  attitude 
response  in  you.  Before  you  are  persuaded  to  go  hot  or  cold,  dig  out  the 
informative  statements  that  support  the  judgments,  the  facts  that  can  be 
checked. 

When  you  hear  words  that  are  frankly  incitive,  the  speaker  is  trying  to 
persuade  you  to  respond  by  a  specific  action.  "Do  this.  Don't  do  that,"  he 
will  say.  Look  for  statements  of  fact  and  statements  of  approved  opinions 
before  you  respond. 

Sometimes  it  is  beneficial  to  the  listener  to  respond  in  the  way  intended 
by  the  speaker;  sometimes  it  is  not.  A  good  listener  responds  warmly  and 
actively,  but  intelligently.  He  does  not  move  forward  blindly. 

And  remember,  to  know  what  a  speaker  is  up  to  helps  you  to  know  why 
he  chose  these  facts  as  against  other  facts,  and  this  highlights  the  sixty- 
four  dollar  question  "What  facts  are  left  out?" 

How's  YOUR  LISTENING  SKILL? 

And  finally,  can  you  make  up  your  own  mind?  You  will  be  bombarded 
with  words,  words  that  are  aimed  at  you  with  a  purpose.  Can  you  dis- 
tinguish between  facts  and  opinions,  between  a  good  opinion  and  a  phony 
one?  Do  you  know  when  you  are  being  persuaded?  Do  you  get  bogged 
down  in  details  so  that  you  lose  all  sense  of  direction?  Can  you  see  an 
idea  sharp  and  clear  against  a  background  of  details?  Can  you  recognize 
the  pattern,  the  structure  that  gives  order  to  the  stream  of  words  that 
assails  you? 

Dr.  Johnson  Converses  on 

Composition     «*  Barnes  Boswe/1  •  4740-1795 


One  of  the  world's  great  biographies  is  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson 
(1791).  From  the  time  of  their  first  meeting  in  1763,  to  Johnsons  death 
in  1784,  BosweJl  carefully  kept  notes  of  their  conversations,  and  it  is 
these  as  much  as  anything  which  bring  that  great  personality  so  vividly 
to  life  in  the  biography.  Far  from  practising  the  tact  recommended  be- 
low by  Franklin,  Dr.  Johnson  was  overbearing  and  dogmatic,  often  dis- 


136  Writer 

coursing  rather  than  conversing.  On  one  occasion  Boswell  writes,  "When 
I  called  on  Dr.  Johnson  the  next  morning,  I  found  him  highly  satisfied 
with  his  colloquial  prowess  the  preceding  evening.  Well,  (said  he),  we 
had  good  talk/  Boswell.  Tes,  Sir;  you  tossed  and  gored  several  per- 
sons/ "  But  Johnsons  superior  wit  and  wisdom  earned  him  the  ac- 
knowledged right  to  lord  it  over  even  the  distinguished  company  he 
frequented. 

[APRIL  30,  1773]  .  .  .  Goldsmith  being  mentioned;  JOHNSON.  "It  is  amazing 
how  little  Goldsmith  knows.  He  seldom  comes  where  he  is  not  more 
ignorant  than  any  one  else/'  SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS.  "Yet  there  is  no  man 
whose  company  is  more  liked."  JOHNSON.  "To  be  sure,  Sir.  When  people 
find  a  man  of  the  most  distinguished  abilities  as  a  writer,  their  inferiour 
while  he  is  with  them,  it  must  be  highly  gratifying  to  them.  What  Gold- 
smith comically  says  of  himself  is  very  true,  —  he  always  gets  the  better 
when  he  argues  alone;  meaning,  that  he  is  master  of  a  subject  in  his 
study,  and  can  write  well  upon  it;  but  when  he  comes  into  company,  grows 
confused,  and  unable  to  talk.  Take  him  as  a  poet,  his  'Traveller'  is  a  very 
fine  performance;  ay,  and  so  is  his  'Deserted  Village/  were  it  not  some- 
times too  much  the  echo  of  his  Traveller/  Whether,  indeed,  we  take  him 
as  a  poet,  —  as  a  comick  writer,  —  or  as  an  historian,  he  stands  in  the  first 
class."  BOSWELL.  "An  historian!  My  dear  Sir,  you  surely  will  not  rank  his 
compilation  of  the  Roman  History  with  the  works  of  other  historians  of 
this  age?"  JOHNSON.  "Why,  who  are  before  him?"  BOSWELL.  "Hume, — 
Robertson,  —  Lord  Lyttelton."  JOHNSON.  (His  antipathy  to  the  Scotch 
beginning  to  rise.)  "I  have  not  read  Hume;  but,  doubtless,  Goldsmith's 
History  is  better  than  the  verbiage  of  Robertson,  or  the  foppery  of  Dalrym- 
ple."  BOSWELL.  "Will  you  not  admit  the  superiority  of  Robertson,  in  whose 
history  we  find  such  penetration  —  such  painting?"  JOHNSON.  "Sir,  you 
must  consider  how  that  penetration  and  that  painting  are  employed.  It  is 
not  history,  it  is  imagination.  He  who  describes  what  he  never  saw,  draws 
from  fancy.  Robertson  paints  minds  as  Sir  Joshua  paints  faces  in  a  history- 
piece:  he  imagines  an  heroick  Countenance.  You  must  look  upon  Robert- 
son's work  as  romance  and  try  it  by  that  standard.  History  it  is  not.  Besides, 
Sir,  it  is  the  great  excellence  of  a  writer  to  put  into  his  book  as  much  as 
his  book  will  hold.  Goldsmith  has  done  this  in  his  History.  Now  Robert- 
son might  have  put  twice  as  much  into  his  book.  Robertson  is  like  a  man 
who  has  packed  gold  in  wool:  the  wool  takes  up  more  room  than  the  gold. 
No,  Sir;  I  always  thought  Robertson  would  be  crushed  by  his  own  weight, 
—  would  be  buried  under  his  own  ornaments.  Goldsmith  tells  you  shortly 
all  you  want  to  know:  Robertson  detains  you  a  great  deal  too  long.  No  man 
will  read  Robertson's  cumbrous  detail  a  second  time;  but  Goldsmith's 
plain  narrative  will  please  again  and  again.  I  would  say  to  Robertson 
what  an  old  tutor  of  a  college  said  to  one  of  his  pupils:  'Read  over  your 
compositions,  and  wherever  you  meet  with  a  passage  which  you  think  is 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  137 

particularly  fine,  strike  it  out/  Goldsmith's  abridgement  is  better  than 
that  of  Lucius  Florus  or  Eutropius;  and  I  will  venture  to  say,  that  if  you 
compare  him  with  Vertot,  in  the  same  places  of  the  Roman  History,  you 
will  find  that  he  excels  Vertot.  Sir,  he  has  the  art  of  compiling,  and  of 
saying  everything  he  has  to  say  in  a  pleasing  manner.  He  is  now  writing 
a  Natural  History,  and  will  make  it  as  entertaining  as  a  Persian  tale." 


On  Disputing    «* 

'Benjamin  franklin  •  i706-i790 


Franklin's  famous  Autobiography,  from  which  this  passage  is  taken, 
was  begun  as  a  long  letter  to  his  son,  and  had  as  one  of  its  chief  pur- 
poses to  explain  some  of  the  means  by  which  he  had  risen  in  the  world. 
He  was  famous  for  his  ability  to  "win  friends  and  influence  people/' 
and  these  paragraphs  show  how  conscious  he  was  of  the  importance  of 
tact  in  conversation. 

WHILE  i  WAS  intent  on  improving  my  language,  I  met  with  an  English 
grammar  ( I  think  it  was  Greenwood's ) ,  at  the  end  of  which  there  were  two 
little  sketches  of  the  arts  of  rhetoric  and  logic,  the  latter  finishing  with  a 
specimen  of  a  dispute  in  the  Socratic  method;  and  soon  after  I  procur'd 
Xenophon's  Memorable  Things  of  Socrates,  wherein  there  are  many  in- 
stances of  the  same  method.  I  was  charm'd  with  it,  adopted  it,  dropt  my 
abrupt  contradiction  and  positive  argumentation,  and  put  on  the  humble 
inquirer  and  doubter.  And  being  then,  from  reading  Shaftesbury  and 
Collins,  become  a  real  doubter  in  many  points  of  our  religious  doctrine,  I 
found  this  method  safest  for  myself  and  very  embarrassing  to  those  against 
whom  I  used  it;  therefore  I  took  a  delight  in  it,  practis'd  it  continually,  and 
grew  very  artful  and  expert  in  drawing  people,  even  of  superior  knowledge, 
into  concessions,  the  consequences  of  which  they  did  not  foresee,  en- 
tangling them  in  difficulties  out  of  which  they  could  not  extricate  them- 
selves, and  so  obtaining  victories  that  neither  myself  nor  my  cause  always 
deserved.  I  continu'd  this  method  some  few  years,  but  gradually  left  it, 
retaining  only  the  habit  of  expressing  myself  in  terms  of  modest  diffidence; 
never  using,  when  I  advanced  anything  that  may  possibly  be  disputed,  the 
words  certainly,  undoubtedly,  or  any  others  that  give  the  air  of  positiveness 
to  an  opinion;  but  rather  say,  I  conceive  or  apprehend  a  thing  to  be  so  and 
so;  it  appears  to  me,  or  I  should  think  it  so  or  so,  for  such  and  such  reasons; 
or  /  imagine  it  to  be  so;  or  it  is  so,  if  I  am  not  mistaken.  This  habit,  I  be- 
lieve, has  been  of  great  advantage  to  me  when  I  have  had  occasion  to  in- 


138  Writer 

culcate  my  opinions,  and  persuade  men  into  measures  that  I  have  been 
from  time  to  time  engag'd  in  promoting;  and,  as  the  chief  ends  of  con- 
versation are  to  inform  or  to  be  informed,  to  please  or  to  persuade,  I  wish 
well-meaning,  sensible  men  would  not  lessen  their  power  of  doing  good 
by  a  positive,  assuming  manner,  that  seldom  fails  to  disgust,  tends  to  create 
opposition,  and  to  defeat  every  one  of  those  purposes  for  which  speech  was 
given  to  us,  to  wit,  giving  or  receiving  information  or  pleasure.  For,  if  you 
would  inform,  a  positive  and  dogmatical  manner  in  advancing  your  senti- 
ments may  provoke  contradiction  and  prevent  a  candid  attention.  If  you 
wish  information  and  improvement  from  the  knowledge  of  others,  and  yet 
at  the  same  time  express  yourself  as  firmly  fix'd  in  your  present  opinions, 
modest,  sensible  men,  who  do  not  love  disputation,  will  probably  leave 
you  undisturbed  in  the  possession  of  your  error.  And  by  such  a  manner, 
you  can  seldom  hope  to  recommend  yourself  in  pleasing  your  hearers,  or  to 
persuade  those  whose  concurrence  you  desire.  Pope  says,  judiciously: 

"Men  should  be  taught  as  if  you  taught  them  not, 
And  things  unknown  propos'd  as  things  forgot;" 

farther  recommending  to  us 

"To  speak,  tho'  sure,  with  seeming  diffidence." 


On  Conversation 

Ring  Gardner  -  4885-4933 


Ring  Lardner  had  an  uncanny  ear  for  the  way  Americans  talk  and 
an  almost  Swiftian  gift  of  satire  in  exposing  our  banalities.  Perhaps  the 
following  "conversation"  bears  enough  resemblance  to  the  way  most  of 
us  converse  to  make  us  see  why  Dr.  Johnson's  friends  valued  his  talk  in 
spite  of  his  overbearing  manners. 

THE  OTHER  night  I  happened  to  be  comeing  back  from  Wilmington,  Del.  to 
wherever  I  was  going  and  was  setting  in  the  smokeing  compartment  or 
whatever  they  now  call  the  wash  room  and  overheard  a  conversation  be- 
tween two  fellows  who  we  will  call  Mr.  Butler  and  Mr.  Hawkes.  Both  of 
them  seemed  to  be  from  the  same  town  and  I  only  wished  I  could  repeat 

Reprinted  from  First  and  Last  by  Ring  Lardner.  Copyright,  1934,  by  Ellis  A.  Lardner. 
Used  by  permission  of  the  publisher,  Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  139 

the  conversation  verbatim  but  the  best  I  can  do  is  report  it  from  memory. 
The  fellows  evidently  had  not  met  for  some  three  to  fifteen  years  as  the 
judges  say. 

"Well,"  said  Mr.  Hawkes,  "if  this  isn't  Dick  Butlerl" 

"Well,"  said  Mr.  Butler,  "if  it  isn't  Dale  Hawkes" 

"Well,  Dick,"  said  Hawkes,  "I  never  expected  to  meet  you  on  this  train." 

"No,"  replied  Butler.  "I  genally  always  take  Number  28.  I  just  took 
this  train  this  evening  because  I  had  to  be  in  Wilmington  today." 

"Where  are  you  headed  for?"  asked  Hawkes. 

"Well,  I  am  going  to  the  big  town,"  said  Butler. 

"So  am  I,  and  I  am  certainly  glad  we  happened  to  be  in  the  same  car." 

"I  am  glad  too,  but  it  is  funny  we  happened  to  be  in  the  same  car." 

It  seemed  funny  to  both  of  them  but  they  successfully  concealed  it  so 
far  as  facial  expression  was  concerned.  After  a  pause  Hawkes  spoke  again: 

"How  long  since  you  been  back  in  Lansing?" 

"Me?"  replied  Butler.   "I  ain't  been  back  there  for  twelve  years." 

"I  ain't  been  back  there  either  myself  for  ten  years.  How  long  since  you 
been  back  there?" 

"I  ain't  been  back  there  for  twelve  years." 

"I  ain't  been  back  there  myself  for  ten  years.  Where  are  you  headed  for?" 

"New  York,"  replied  Butler.  "I  have  got  to  get  there  about  once  a  year. 
Where  are  you  going?" 

"Me?"  asked  Hawkes.  "I  am  going  to  New  York  too.  I  have  got  to  go 
down  there  every  little  wile  for  the  firm." 

"Do  you  have  to  go  there  very  often?" 

"Me?  Every  little  wile.  How  often  do  you  have  to  go  there?" 

"About  once  a  year.   How  often  do  you  get  back  to  Lansing?" 

"Last  time  I  was  there  was  ten  years  ago.  How  long  since  you  was  back?" 

"About  twelve  years  ago.   Lot  of  changes  there  since  we  left  there." 

"That's  the  way  I  figured  it.  It  makes  a  man  seem  kind  of  old  to  go  back 
there  and  not  see  nobody  you  know." 

"You  said  something.  I  go  along  the  streets  there  now  and  don't  see  no- 
body I  know." 

"How  long  since  you  was  there?" 

"Me?"  said  Hawkes.  "I  only  get  back  there  about  once  every  ten  years. 
By  the  way  what  become  of  old  man  Kelsey?" 

"Who  do  you  mean,  Kelsey?" 

"Yes,  what  become  of  him?" 

"Old  Kelsey?  Why  he  has  been  dead  for  ten  years," 

"Oh,  I  didn't  know  that.  And  what  become  of  his  daughter?  I  mean 
Eleanor.* 

"Why  Eleanor  married  a  man  named  Forster  or  Jennings  or  something 
like  that  from  Flint." 

"Yes,  but  I  mean  the  other  daughter,  Louise." 

"Oh,  she's  married." 


140  Writer 

"Where  are  you  going  now?" 

"I  am  headed  for  New  York  on  business  for  the  firm.* 

"I  have  to  go  there  about  once  a  year  myself  —  for  the  firm." 

"Do  you  get  back  to  Lansing  very  often?" 

"About  once  in  ten  or  twelve  years.  I  hardly  know  anybody  there  now. 
It  seems  funny  to  go  down  the  street  and  not  know  nobody." 

"That's  the  way  I  always  feel.  It  seems  like  it  was  not  my  old  home  town 
at  all.  I  go  up  and  down  the  street  and  don't  know  anybody  and  nobody 
speaks  to  you.  I  guess  I  know  more  people  in  New  York  now  than  I  do 
in  Lansing." 

"Do  you  get  to  New  York  often?" 

"Only  about  once  a  year.   I  have  to  go  there  for  the  firm." 

"New  York  isn't  the  same  town  it  used  to  be  neither." 

"No,  it  is  changeing  all  the  time.  Just  like  Lansing.  I  guess  they  all 
change." 

"I  don't  know  much  about  Lansing  any  more.  I  only  get  there  about 
once  in  ten  or  twelve  years." 

"What  are  you  reading  there?" 

"Oh,  it  is  just  a  little  article  in  Asia.  They's  a  good  many  interesting 
articles  in  Asia." 

"I  only  seen  a  couple  copies  of  it.  This  thing  I  am  reading  is  a  little 
article  on  'Application'  in  the  American" 

"Well,  go  ahead  and  read  and  don't  let  me  disturb  you." 

"Well  I  just  wanted  to  finish  it  up.  Go  ahead  and  finish  what  you're 
reading  yourself." 

"All  right.  We  will  talk  things  over  later.  It  is  funny  we  happened  to 
get  on  the  same  car." 


2.  WRITING  LETTERS 

Sam  Weller's  Valentine 

Charles  Dickens  •  t8i2-i870 


How  many  of  your  own  good  or  bad  habits,  traits,  or  impulses  in 
letter-writing  can  you  see  in  this  humorous  sketch  from  Pickwick 
Papers  (1837),  and  what  useful  hints  do  you  find  scattered  along  the 
way? 

As  HE  was  sauntering  away  his  spare  time,  and  stopped  to  look  at  almost 
every  object  that  met  his  gaze,  it  is  by  no  means  surprising  that  Mr.  Weller 
should  have  paused  before  a  small  stationer's  and  print-seller's  window; 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  141 

but  without  further  explanation  it  does  appear  surprising  that  his  eyes 
should  have  no  sooner  rested  on  certain  pictures  which  were  exposed  for 
sale  therein,  than  he  gave  a  sudden  start,  smote  his  right  leg  with  great 
vehemence,  and  exclaimed  with  energy,  "If  it  hadn't  been  for  this,  I  should 
ha'  forgot  all  about  it,  till  it  was  too  latel" 

The  particular  picture  on  which  Sam  Weller's  eyes  were  fixed,  as  he  said 
this,  was  a  highly  coloured  representation  of  a  couple  of  human  hearts 
skewered  together  with  an  arrow,  cooking  before  a  cheerful  fire,  while  a 
male  and  female  cannibal  in  modern  attire,  the  gentleman  being  clad  in  a 
blue  coat  and  white  trousers,  and  the  lady  in  a  deep  red  pelisse  with  a 
parasol  of  the  same,  were  approaching  the  meal  with  hungry  eyes,  up  a 
serpentine  gravel  path  leading  thereunto.  A  decidedly  indelicate  young 
gentleman,  in  a  pair  of  wings  and  nothing  else,  was  depicted  as  superin- 
tending the  cooking;  a  representation  of  the  spire  of  the  church  in  Lang- 
ham  Place  appeared  in  the  distance;  and  the  whole  formed  a  "valentine," 
of  which,  as  a  written  inscription  in  the  window  testified,  there  was  a 
large  assortment  within,  which  the  shopkeeper  pledged  himself  to  dispose 
of  to  his  countrymen  generally,  at  the  reduced  rate  of  one  and  sixpence 
each. 

"I  should  ha'  forgot  it;  I  should  certainly  ha'  forgot  it!"  said  Sam;  and 
so  saying,  he  at  once  stepped  into  the  stationer's  shop,  and  requested  to  be 
served  with  a  sheet  of  the  best  gilt-edged  letter-paper,  and  a  hard-nibbed 
pen  which  could  be  warranted  not  to  splutter.  These  articles  having  been 
promptly  supplied,  he  walked  on  direct  towards  Leadenhall  Market  at  a 
good  round  pace,  very  different  from  his  recent  lingering  one.  Looking 
round  him,  he  there  beheld  a  signboard  on  which  the  painter's  art  had 
delineated  something  remotely  resembling  a  cerulean  elephant  with  an 
aquiline  nose  in  lieu  of  trunk.  Rightly  conjecturing  that  this  was  the  Blue 
Boar  himself,  he  stepped  into  the  house,  and  inquired  concerning  his 
parent. 

"He  won't  be  here  this  three  quarters  of  an  hour  or  more,"  said  the 
young  lady  who  superintended  the  domestic  arrangements  of  the  Blue 
Boar. 

"Wery  good,  my  dear,"  replied  Sam.  "Let  me  have  nine  penn'orth  o' 
brandy  and  water  luke,  and  the  inkstand,  will  you,  miss?" 

The  brandy  and  water  luke  and  the  inkstand  having  been  carried  into  the 
little  parlour,  and  the  young  lady  having  carefully  flattened  down  the  coals 
to  prevent  their  blazing,  and  carried  away  the  poker  to  preclude  the  pos- 
sibility of  the  fire  being  stirred,  without  the  full  privity  and  concurrence  of 
the  Blue  Boar  being  first  had  and  obtained,  Sam  Weller  sat  himself  down  in 
a  box  near  the  stove,  and  pulled  out  the  sheet  of  gilt-edged  letter-paper, 
and  the  hard-nibbed  pen.  Then  looking  carefully  at  the  pen  to  see  that 
there  were  no  hairs  in  it,  and  dusting  down  the  table,  so  that  there  might 
be  no  crumbs  of  bread  under  the  paper,  Sam  tucked  up  the  cuffs  of  his 
coat,  squared  his  elbows,  and  composed  himself  to  write. 

To  ladies  and  gentlemen  who  are  not  in  the  habit  of  devoting  them- 


142  Writer 

selves  practically  to  the  science  of  penmanship,  writing  a  letter  is  no  very 
easy  task,  it  being  always  considered  necessary  in  such  cases  for  the  writer 
to  recline  his  head  on  his  left  arm  so  as  to  place  his  eyes  as  nearly  as  pos- 
sible on  a  level  with  the  paper,  and  while  glancing  sideways  at  the  letters 
he  is  constructing,  to  form  with  his  tongue  imaginary  characters  to  cor- 
respond. These  motions,  although  unquestionably  of  the  greatest  assistance 
to  original  composition,  retard  in  some  degree  the  progress  of  the  writer, 
and  Sam  had  unconsciously  been  a  full  hour  and  a  half  writing  words  in 
small  text,  smearing  out  wrong  letters  with  his  little  finger,  and  putting  in 
new  ones  which  required  going  over  very  often  to  render  them  visible 
through  the  old  blots,  when  he  was  roused  by  the  opening  of  the  door  and 
the  entrance  of  his  parent. 
"Veil,  Sammy,"  said  the  father. 

"Veil,  my  Prooshan  Blue,"  responded  the  son,  laying  down  his  pen. 
"What's  the  last  bulletin  about  mother-in-law?" 

"Mrs.  Veller  passed  a  wery  good  night,  but  is  uncommon  perwerse,  and 
unpleasant  this  mornin' —  signed  upon  oath  —  S.  Veller,  Esquire,  Senior. 
That's  the  last  vun  as  was  issued,  Sammy,"  replied  Mr.  Weller,  untying  his 
shawl. 

"No  better  yet?"  inquired  Sam. 

"All  the  symptoms  aggerawated,"  replied  Mr.  Weller,  shaking  his  head. 
"But  wot's  that,  you're  a  doin'  of  —  pursuit  of  knowledge  under  difficulties 
—  eh,  Sammy?" 

"I've  done  now,"  said  Sam  with  slight  embarrassment;  "I've  been  a 
writin'." 

"So  I  see,"  replied  Mr.  Weller.  "Not  to  any  young  'ooman,  I  hope, 
Sammy." 

"Why,  it's  no  use  a  sayin'  it  ain't,"  replied  Sam.  "It's  a  walentine." 
"A  what!"  exclaimed  Mr.  Weller,  apparently  horror-stricken  by  the  word. 
"A  walentine,"  replied  Sam. 

"Samivel,  Samivel,"  said  Mr.  Weller,  in  reproachful  accents,  "I  didn't 
think  you'd  ha'  done  it.  Arter  the  warnin'  you've  had  o'  your  father's 
wicious  perpensities;  arter  all  I've  said  to  you  upon  this  here  wery  subject; 
arter  actiwally  seein'  and  bein'  in  the  company  o'  your  own  mother-in-law, 
vich  I  should  ha'  thought  wos  a  moral  lesson  as  no  man  could  ever  ha' 
forgotten  to  his  dyin'  day!  I  didn't  think  you'd  ha'  done  it,  Sammy,  I 
didn't  think  you'd  ha'  done  it."  These  reflections  were  too  much  for  the 
good  old  man.  He  raised  Sam's  tumbler  to  his  lips  and  drank  off  its  con- 
tents. 

"Wot's  the  matter  now!"  said  Sam. 

"Nev'r  mind,  Sammy,"  replied  Mr.  Weller,  "it'll  be  a  wery  agonizin*  trial 
to  me  at  my  time  of  life,  but  I'm  pretty  tough,  that's  vun  consolation,  as 
the  wery  old  turkey  remarked  ven  the  farmer  said  he  wos  afeerd  he  should 
be  obliged  to  kill  him,  for  the  London  market." 
"Wot'll  be  a  trial?"  inquired  Sam. 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  143 

"To  see  you  married,  Sammy  —  to  see  you  a  dilluded  wictim,  and 
thinkin'  in  your  innocence  that  it's  all  wery  capital,"  replied  Mr.  Weller. 
"It's  a  dreadful  trial  to  a  father's  feelin's,  that  'ere,  Sammy." 

"Nonsense,"  said  Sam.  "I  ain't  a  goin'  to  get  married,  don't  you  fret  your- 
self about  that;  I  know  you're  a  judge  o'  these  things.  Order  in  your  pipe, 
and  I'll  read  you  the  letter  —  there." 

We  cannot  distinctly  say  whether  it  was  the  prospect  of  the  pipe,  or  the 
consolatory  reflection  that  a  fatal  disposition  to  get  married  ran  in  the 
family  and  couldn't  be  helped,  which  calmed  Mr.  Weller's  feelings,  and 
caused  his  grief  to  subside.  We  should  be  rather  disposed  to  say  that  the 
result  was  attained  by  combining  the  two  sources  of  consolation,  for  he 
repeated  the  second  in  a  low  tone,  very  frequently;  ringing  the  bell  mean- 
while, to  order  in  the  first.  He  then  divested  himself  of  his  upper  coat;  and 
lighting  the  pipe  and  placing  himself  in  front  of  the  fire  with  his  back 
towards  it,  so  that  he  could  feel  its  full  heat,  and  recline  against  the  mantel- 
piece at  the  same  time,  turned  towards  Sam,  and,  with  a  countenance 
greatly  mollified  by  the  softening  influence  of  tobacco,  requested  him  to 
"fire  away." 

Sam  dipped  his  pen  into  the  ink  to  be  ready  for  any  corrections,  and 
began  with  a  very  theatrical  air  — 

"  'Lovely ' " 

"Stop,"  said  Mr.  Weller,  ringing  the  bell.  "A  double  glass  o'  the  inwari- 
able,  my  dear." 

"Very  well,  Sir,"  replied  the  girl;  who  with  great  quickness  appeared, 
vanished,  returned,  and  disappeared. 

"They  seem  to  know  your  ways  here,"  observed  Sam. 

"Yes,"  replied  his  father,  "I've  been  here  before,  in  my  time.  Go  on, 
Sammy." 

"'Lovely  creetur,'"  repeated  Sam. 

"  'Tain't  in  poetry,  is  it?"  interposed  the  father. 

"No,  no,"  replied  Sam. 

"Werry  glad  to  hear  it,"  said  Mr.  Weller.  "Poetry's  unnat'ral;  no  man 
ever  talked  in  poetry  'cept  a  beadle  on  boxin'  day,  or  Warren's  blackin*  or 
Rowland's  oil,  or  some  o'  them  low  fellows;  never  you  let  yourself  down  to 
talk  poetry,  my  boy.  Begin  again,  Sammy." 

Mr.  Weller  resumed  his  pipe  with  critical  solemnity,  and  Sam  once  more 
commenced,  and  read  as  follows. 

"  'Lovely  creetur  i  feel  myself  a  dammed' ." 

"That  ain't  proper,"  said  Mr.  Weller,  taking  his  pipe  from  his  mouth. 

"No;  it  ain't  'dammed/  "  observed  Sam,  holding  the  letter  up  to  the  light, 
"it's  'shamed,'  there's  a  blot  there  —  1  feel  myself  ashamed/" 

"Wery  good,"  said  Mr.  Weller.  "Go  on." 

"  Teel  myself  ashamed,  and  completely  cir '  I  forget  wot  this  here 

word  is,"  said  Sam,  scratching  his  head  with  the  pen,  in  vain  attempts  to 
remember. 


144  Writer 

"Why  don't  you  look  at  it,  then?"  inquired  Mr.  Weller. 

"So  I  am  a  lookin'  at  it,"  replied  Sam,  "but  there's  another  blot:  here's  a 
'c/anda'i/anda'd.'" 

"Circumwented,  pYaps,"  suggested  Mr.  Weller. 

"No,  it  ain't  that,"  said  Sam,  "circumscribed,  that's  it/' 

"That  ain't  as  good  a  word  as  circumwented,  Sammy,"  said  Mr.  Weller 
gravely. 

"Think  not?"  said  Sam. 

"Nothin'  like  it,"  replied  his  father. 

"But  don't  you  think  it  means  more?"  inquired  Sam. 

"Veil,  p'r'aps  it  is  a  more  tenderer  word,"  said  Mr.  Weller,  after  a  few 
moments'  reflection.  "Go  on,  Sammy." 

"  'Feel  myself  ashamed  and  completely  circumscribed  in  a  dressin'  of  you, 
for  you  are  a  nice  gal  and  nothin'  but  it/  " 

"That's  a  wery  pretty  sentiment,"  said  the  elder  Mr.  Weller,  removing  his 
pipe  to  make  way  for  the  remark. 

"Yes,  I  think  it  is  rayther  good,"  observed  Sam,  highly  flattered. 

"Wot  I  like  in  that  'ere  style  of  writin',"  said  the  elder  Mr.  Weller,  "is, 
that  there  ain't  no  callin'  names  in  it,  —  no  Wenuses,  nor  nothin'  o'  that 
kind;  wot's  the  good  o'  callin'  a  young  'ooman  a  Wenus  or  a  angel,  Sammy?" 

"Ah!  what,  indeed?"  replied  Sam. 

"You  might  jist  as  veil  call  her  a  griffin,  or  a  unicorn,  or  a  king's  arms  at 
once,  which  is  wery  veil  known  to  be  a  col-lection  o'  fabulous  animals," 
added  Mr.  Weller. 

"Just  as  well,"  replied  Sam. 

"Drive  on,  Sammy,"  said  Mr.  Weller. 

Sam  complied  with  the  request,  and  proceeded  as  follows,  his  father 
continuing  to  smoke,  with  a  mixed  expression  of  wisdom  and  complacency, 
which  was  particularly  edifying. 

"'Afore  I  see  you  I  thought  all  women  was  alike/" 

"So  they  are,"  observed  the  elder  Mr.  Weller,  parenthetically. 

"  'But  now,'  continued  Sam,  'now  I  find  what  a  reg'lar  soft-headed,  ink- 
red'lous  turnip  I  must  ha'  been  for  there  ain't  nobody  like  you  though  7 
like  you  better  than  nothin*  at  all/  I  thought  it  best  to  make  that  rayther 
strong,"  said  Sam,  looking  up. 

Mr.  Weller  nodded  approvingly,  and  Sam  resumed. 

"  'So  I  take  the  privilidge  of  the  day,  Mary,  my  dear  —  as  the  gen'lem'n 
in  difficulties  did,  ven  he  valked  out  of  a  Sunday,  —  to  tell  you  that  the 
first  and  only  time  I  see  you  your  likeness  was  took  on  my  hart  in  much 
quicker  time  and  brighter  colours  than  ever  a  likeness  was  took  by  the 
profeel  macheen  (wich  p'r'aps  you  may  have  heerd  on  Mary  my  dear) 
altho  it  does  finish  a  portrait  and  put  the  frame  and  glass  on  complete  with 
a  hook  at  the  end  to  hang  it  up  by  and  all  in  two  minutes  and  a  quarter/  " 

"I  am  afeerd  that  werges  on  the  poetical,  Sammy,"  said  Mr.  Weller, 
dubiously. 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  145 

"No,  it  don't,"  replied  Sam,  reading  on  very  quickly,  to  avoid  contest- 
ing the  point 

"'Except  of  me  Mary  my  dear  as  your  walentine  and  think  over  what 
I've  said.  —  My  dear  Mary  I  will  now  conclude/  That's  all,"  said  Sam. 

"That's  rayther  a  sudden  pull  up,  ain't  it,  Sammy?"  inquired  Mr.  Weller. 

"Not  a  bit  on  it,"  said  Sam;  "shell  vish  there  wos  more,  and  that's  the 
great  art  o'  letter  writin'." 

"Well,"  said  Mr.  Weller,  "there's  somethin'  in  that;  and  I  wish  your 
mother-in-law  'ud  only  conduct  her  conwersation  on  the  same  gen-teel 
principle.  Ain't  you  a  goin'  to  sign  it?" 

"That's  the  difficulty,"  said  Sam;  "I  don't  know  what  to  sign  it." 

"Sign  it  —  'Veller/  "  said  the  oldest  surviving  proprietor  of  that  name. 

"Won't  do,"  said  Sam.  "Never  sign  a  walentine  with  your  own  name." 

"Sign  it  Tickvick,'  then,"  said  Mr.  Weller;  "it's  a  wery  good  name,  and  a 
easy  one  to  spell." 

"The  wery  thing,"  said  Sam.  "I  could  end  with  a  werse;  what  do  you 
think?" 

"I  don't  like  it,  Sam,"  rejoined  Mr.  Weller.  "I  never  know'd  a  respectable 
coachman  as  wrote  poetry,  'cept  one,  as  made  an  affectin'  copy  o'  werses 
the  night  afore  he  wos  hung  for  a  highway  robbery;  and  he  wos  only  a 
Cambervell  man,  so  even  that's  no  rule." 

But  Sam  was  not  to  be  dissuaded  from  the  poetical  idea  that  had  oc- 
curred to  him,  so  he  signed  the  letter  — 

Your  love-sick 
Pickwick. 

And  having  folded  it,  in  a  very  intricate  manner,  squeezed  a  downhill  di- 
rection in  one  corner:  "To  Mary,  Housemaid,  at  Mr.  Nupkins's  Mayor's, 
Ipswich,  Suffolk";  and  put  it  into  his  pocket,  wafered,  and  ready  for  the 
General  Post. 


Two  Letters     &•       Herman  JWelvilk  •  i8i9-i89i 


One  of  America's  most  distinguished  writers,  the  author  of  Moby- 
Dick  (1851),  Herman  Melville  wrote  delightful  personal  letters.  The 
first  of  the  two  which  follow  was  written  to  his  friend  Evert  Duyckinck, 
editor  of  a  New  York  literary  journal.  Melville  was  in  the  midst  of 
Moby-Dick  at  the  time.  The  second  letter  was  written  to  his  eleven- 
year-old  son  Malcolm  from  a  clipper-ship  on  which  Melville  was  sail- 
ing round  the  Horn  to  San  Francisco. 


146  Writer 

[To  EVERT  DUYCKINCK] 

Tuesday  Evening  [December  12,  1850] 

Pittsfield  [Mass.] 
MY  DEAR  DUYCKINCK, 

If  you  overhaul  your  old  diaries  you  will  see  that  a  long  period  ago  you 
were  acquainted  with  one  Herman  Melville;  that  he  then  resided  in  New 
York;  but  removing  after  a  time  into  a  remote  region  called  Berkshire,  and 
failing  to  answer  what  letters  you  sent  him,  you  but  reasonably  supposed 
him  dead;  at  any  rate  did  not  hear  anything  of  him  again,  &  so  by  degrees 
you  thought  no  more  about  him. 

I  now  write  to  inform  you  that  this  man  has  turned  up  —  in  short,  my 
Dear  Fellow  in  spite  of  my  incivility  I  am  alive  &  well,  &  would  fain  be 
remembered. 

Before  I  go  further  let  me  say  here  that  I  am  writing  this  by  candle 
light  —  an  uncommon  thing  with  me  —  &  therefore  my  writing  wont  be 
very  legible,  because  I  am  keeping  one  eye  shut  &  wink  at  the  paper  with 
the  other. 

If  you  expect  a  letter  from  a  man  who  lives  in  the  country  you  must 
make  up  your  mind  to  receive  an  egotistical  one  —  for  he  has  no  gossip 
nor  news  of  any  kind,  unless  his  neighbor's  cow  has  calved  or  the  hen  has 
laid  a  silver  egg.  —  By  the  way,  this  reminds  me  that  one  of  my  neighbors 
has  has  [sic]  really  met  with  a  bad  accident  in  the  loss  of  a  fine  young  colt. 
That  neighbor  is  our  friend  Mrs  Morewood.  Mr  Doolittle  —  my  cousin  — 
was  crossing  the  R.R.  track  yesterday  (where  it  runs  thro  the  wooded  part 
of  the  farm.)  in  his  slay  —  sleigh  I  mean  —  and  was  followed  by  all  three 
of  Mrs  Morewood's  horses  (they  running  at  large  for  the  sake  of  the  air  & 
exercise).  Well:  just  as  Doolittle  got  on  the  track  with  his  vehicle,  along 
comes  the  Locomotive  —  whereupon  Doolittle  whips  up  like  mad  &  steers 
clear;  but  the  frightened  horses  following  him,  they  scamper  off  full  before 
the  engine,  which  hitting  them  right  &  left,  tumbles  one  into  a  ditch, 
pitches  another  into  a  snowbank,  &  chases  the  luckless  third  so  hard  as  to 
come  into  direct  contact  with  him,  &  break  his  leg  clean  into  two  pieces.  — 
With  his  leg  "in  splints"  that  is  done  up  by  the  surgeon,  the  poor  colt  now 
lies  in  his  straw,  &  the  prayers  of  all  good  Christians  are  earnestly  solicited 
in  his  behalf.  Certainly,  considering  the  bounding  spirit  and  full-blooded 
life  in  that  colt  —  how  it  might  for  many  a  summer  have  sported  in  pastures 
of  red  clover  &  gone  cantering  merrily  along  the  "Gulf  Road"  with  a 
sprightly  Mrs  Morewood  on  his  back,  patting  his  neck  &  lovingly  talking 
to  him  —  considering  all  this,  I  say,  I  really  think  that  a  broken  leg  for  him 
is  not  one  jot  less  bad  than  it  would  be  for  me  —  tho'  I  grant  you,  even  as 
it  is  with  him,  he  has  one  more  leg  than  I  have  now. 

I  have  a  sort  of  sea-feeling  here  in  the  country,  now  that  the  ground  is 
all  covered  with  snow.  I  look  out  of  my  window  in  the  morning  when  I 
rise  as  I  would  out  of  a  port-hole  of  a  ship  in  the  Atlantic.  My  room  seems 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  147 

a  ship's  cabin;  &  at  nights  when  I  wake  up  &  hear  the  wind  shrieking,  I 
almost  fancy  there  is  too  much  sail  on  the  house,  &  I  had  better  go  on  the 
roof  &  rig  in  the  chimney. 

Do  you  want  to  know  how  I  pass  my  time?  —  I  rise  at  eight  —  there- 
abouts —  &  go  to  my  barn  —  say  good-morning  to  the  horse,  &  give  him  his 
breakfast.  (It  goes  to  my  heart  to  give  him  a  cold  one,  but  it  can't  be 
helped)  Then,  pay  a  visit  to  my  cow  —  cut  up  a  pumpkin  or  two  for  her, 
&  stand  by  to  see  her  eat  it  —  for  its  a  pleasant  sight  to  see  a  cow  move 
her  jaws  —  she  does  it  so  mildly  &  with  such  a  sanctity.  —  My  own  break- 
fast over,  I  go  to  my  work-room  &  light  my  fire  —  then  spread  my  M.S.S. 
on  the  table  —  take  one  business  squint  at  it,  &  fall  to  with  a  will.  At  2tt 
P.M.  I  hear  a  preconcerted  knock  at  my  door,  which  (by  request)  continues 
till  I  rise  &  go  to  the  door,  which  serves  to  wean  me  effectively  from  my 
writing,  however  interested  I  may  be.  My  friends  the  horse  &  cow  now 
demand  their  dinner  —  &  I  go  &  give  it  them.  My  own  dinner  over,  I  rig 
my  sleigh  &  with  my  mother  or  sisters  start  off  for  the  village  —  &  if  it  be 
a  Literary  World  day,  great  is  the  satisfaction  thereof.  —  My  evenings  I 
spend  in  a  sort  of  mesmeric  state  in  my  room  —  not  being  able  to  read  — 
only  now  &  then  skimming  over  some  large-printed  book.  —  Can  you  send 
me  about  fifty  fast-writing  youths,  with  an  easy  style  &  not  averse  to  pol- 
ishing their  labors?  If  you  can,  I  wish  you  would,  because  since  I  have 
been  here  I  have  planned  about  that  number  of  future  works  &  cant  find 
enough  time  to  think  about  them  separately.  —  But  I  dont  know  but  a 
book  in  a  man's  brain  is  better  off  than  a  book  bound  in  calf  —  at  any  rate 
it  is  safer  from  criticism.  And  taking  a  book  off  the  brain,  is  akin  to  the 
ticklish  &  dangerous  business  of  taking  an  old  painting  off  a  panel  —  you 
have  to  scrape  off  the  whole  brain  in  order  to  get  at  it  with  due  safety  — 
&  even  then,  the  painting  may  not  be  worth  the  trouble.  —  I  meant  to 
have  left  more  room  for  something  else  besides  my  own  concerns.  But 
I  cant  help  it.  —  I  see  Adler  is  at  work  —  or  has  already  achieved  a 
German  translation.  I  am  glad  to  hear  it.  Remember  me  to  him.  —  In 
the  country  here,  I  begin  to  appreciate  the  Literary  World.  I  read  it  as 
a  sort  of  private  letter  from  you  to  me. 

Remember  me  to  your  brother.    My  respects  to  Mrs  Duyckinck  &  all 
your  family.   The  "sad"  young  lady  sends  her  regards. 

H  MELVILLE. 

Mrs  Melville  with  Malcolm  is  in  Boston  —  or  that  lady  would  send 
her  particular  regards. 


148  Writer 

(To  MALCOLM  MELVILLE] 

Pacific  Ocean  ( Off  the  coast  of  South  America 
On  the  Tropic  of  Capricorn) 
Saturday  September  1st  1860 
MY  DEAR  MALCOLM: 

It  is  now  three  months  exactly  since  the  ship  "Meteor"  sailed  from 
Boston  —  a  quarter  of  a  year.    During  this  long  period,  she  has  been 
continually  moving,  and  has  only  seen  land  on  two  days.   I  suppose  you 
have  followed  out  on  the  map  (or  my  globe  were  better  —  so  you  get 
Mama  to  clean  it  off  for  you)  the  route  from  Boston  to  San  Francisco. 
The  distance,  by  the  straight  track,  is  about  16000  miles;  but  the  ship 
will  have  sailed  before  she  gets  there  nearer  18  or  20000  miles.    So  you 
see  it  is  further  than  from  the  apple-tree  to  the  big  rock.    When  we 
crossed  the  Line  in  the  Atlantic  Ocean  it  was  very  warm;  &  we  had 
warm  weather  for  some  weeks;  but  as  we  kept  getting  to  the  Southward 
it  began  to  grow  less  warm,  and  then  coolish,  and  cold  and  colder,  till 
at  last  it  was  winter.    I  wore  two  flannel  shirts,  and  big  mittens  &  over- 
coat, and  a  great  Russia  cap,  a  very  thick  leather  cap,  so  called  by  sailors. 
At  last  we  came  in  sight  of  land  all  covered  with  snow  —  uninhabited 
land,  where  no  one  ever  lived,  and  no  one  ever  will  live  —  it  is  so  barren, 
cold  and  desolate.   This  was  Staten  Land  —  an  island.   Near  it,  is  the  big 
island  of  Terra  del  Fuego.    We  passed  through  between  these  islands, 
and  had  a  good  view  of  both.    There  are  some  "wild  people"  living  on 
Terra  del  Fuego;  but  it  being  the  depth  of  winter  there,  I  suppose  they 
kept  in  their  caves.    At  any  rate  we  saw  none  of  them.    The  next  day 
we  were  off  Cape  Horn,  the  Southernmost  point  of  all  America.    Now 
it  was  very  bad  weather,  and  was  dark  at  about  three  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon.   The  wind  blew  terribly.    We  had  hail-storms,  and  snow  and  sleet, 
and  often  the  spray  froze  as  it  touched  the  deck.    The  ship  rolled,  and 
sometimes  took  in  so  much  water  on  the  deck  as  to  wash  people  off  their 
legs.    Several  sailors  were  washed  along  the  deck  this  way,  and  came 
near  getting  washed  overboard.   And  this  reminds  me  of  a  very  sad  thing 
that  happened  the  very  morning  we  were  off  the  Cape  —  I  mean  the 
very  pitch  of  the  Cape.  —  It  was  just  about  day-light;  it  was  blowing 
a  gale  of  wind;  and  Uncle  Tom  ordered  the  topsails  (big  sails)  to  be 
furled.   Whilst  the  sailors  were  aloft  on  one  of  the  yards,  the  ship  rolled 
and  plunged  terribly;   and  it  blew  with  sleet  and  hail,  and  was  very 
cold  &  biting.  Well,  all  at  once,  Uncle  Tom  saw  something  falling  through 
the  air,  and  then  heard  a  thump,  and  then,  —  looking  before  him,  saw 
a  poor  sailor  lying  dead  on  the  deck.   He  had  fallen  from  the  yard,  and 
was  killed  instantly.  —  His  shipmates  picked  him  up,  and  carried  him 
under  cover.    By  and  by,  when  time  could  be  spared,  the  sailmakers 
sewed  up  the  body  in  a  piece  of  sail-cloth,  putting  some  iron  balls  — 
cannon  balls  —  at  the  foot  of  it.  And,  when  all  was  ready,  the  body  was 
put  on  a  plank,  and  carried  to  the  ship's  side  in  the  presence  of  all  hands. 
Then  Uncle  Tom,  as  Captain,  read  a  prayer  out  of  the  prayer-book,  and 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  149 

at  a  given  word,  the  sailors  who  held  the  plank  tipped  it  up,  and  im- 
mediately the  body  slipped  into  the  stormy  ocean,  and  we  saw  it  no 
more.  —  Such  is  the  way  a  poor  sailor  is  buried  at  sea.  This  sailor's 
name  was  Ray.  He  had  a  friend  among  the  crew;  and  they  were  both  go- 
ing to  California,  and  thought  of  living  there;  but  you  see  what  happened. 
We  were  in  this  stormy  weather  about  forty  or  fifty  days,  dating  from 
the  beginning.  But  now  at  last  we  are  in  fine  weather  again,  and  the 
sun  shines  warm.  (See  page  5th) 

Pacific  Ocean,  on  the  Line,  Sep.  16th  1860 
MY  DEAR  MALCOLM: 

Since  coming  to  the  end  of  the  fourth  page,  we  have  been  sailing  in 
fine  weather,  and  it  has  continued  quite  warm.  —  The  other  day  we  saw 
a  whale-ship;  and  I  got  into  a  boat  and  sailed  over  the  ocean  in  it  to  the 
whale-ship,  and  stayed  there  about  an  hour.  They  had  eight  or  ten  of 
the  "wild  people"  aboard.  The  Captain  of  the  whale-ship  had  hired  them 
at  one  of  the  islands  called  Rarotonga.  He  wanted  them  to  help  pull  in 
the  whale-boat  when  they  hunt  the  whale.  —  Uncle  Tom's  crew  are  now 
very  busy  making  the  ship  look  smart  for  San  Francisco.  They  are  tar- 
ring the  rigging,  and  are  going  to  paint  the  ship,  &  the  masts  and  yards. 
She  looks  very  rusty  now,  oweing  [sic]  to  so  much  bad  weather  that  we 
have  been  in.  —  When  we  get  to  San-Francisco,  I  shall  put  this  letter 
in  the  post  office  there,  and  you  will  get  it  in  about  25  days  afterwards. 
It  will  go  in  a  steamer  to  a  place  called  Panama,  on  the  Isthmus  of 
Darien  (get  out  your  map,  &  find  it)  then  it  will  cross  the  Isthmus  by 
railroad  to  Aspinwall  or  Chagres  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico;  then,  another 
steamer  will  take  it,  which  steamer,  after  touching  at  Havanna  in  Cuba 
for  coals,  will  go  direct  to  New  York;  and  there,  it  will  go  to  the  Post 
Office,  and  so,  get  to  Pittsfield. 

I  hope  that,  when  it  arrives,  it  will  find  you  well,  and  all  the  family. 
And  I  hope  that  you  have  called  to  mind  what  I  said  to  you  about  your 
behaviour  previous  to  my  going  away.  I  hope  that  you  have  been  obedient 
to  your  mother,  and  helped  her  all  you  could,  &  saved  her  trouble.  Now 
is  the  time  to  show  what  you  are  —  whether  you  are  a  good,  honorable 
boy,  or  a  good-for-nothing  one.  Any  boy,  of  your  age,  who  disobeys 
his  mother,  or  worries  her,  or  is  disrespectful  to  her  —  such  a  boy  is  a 
poor  shabby  fellow;  and  if  you  know  any  such  boys,  you  ought  to  cut 
their  acquaintance. 

Now  my  Dear  Malcolm,  I  must  finish  my  letter  to  you.  I  think  of  you, 
and  Stanwix  &  Bessie  and  Fanny  very  often;  and  often  long  to  be  with 
you.  But  it  can  not  be,  at  present.  The  picture  which  I  have  of  you  & 
the  rest,  I  look  at  sometimes,  till  the  faces  almost  seem  real.  —  Now, 
my  Dear  Boy,  good  bye,  &  God  bless  you 

Your  affectionate  father 
H  MELVILLE 
I  enclose  a  little  baby  flying-fish's  wing  for  Fanny 


Miss  Emily's  Maggie 


Leyda 


Emily  Dickinson  (1830-1886)  is  now  recognized  as  one  of  Amer- 
ica's greatest  poets  and  one  of  the  great  woman  poets  of  all  literature. 
She  published  few  poems  and  had  no  chance  for  recognition  during  her 
lifetime,  which  was  spent  quietly  in  her  father's  house  in  the  town  of 
Amherst,  Massachusetts,  with  few  journeys  beyond  her  native  region. 
Legends  have  grown  up  around  her  outwardly  quiet  life,  portraying  her 
as  a  complete  recluse  and  dramatizing  the  supposed  unhappy  love 
which  her  poems  seem  to  spring  from.  Mr.  Ley  da  is  engaged  on  a 
documentary  biography  of  Emily  Dickinson  which  will  do  much  to 
dispel  such  romantic  legends  by  revealing  the  wealth  of  human  as- 
sociations she  enjoyed  both  near  at  hand  and  through  her  wide  corre- 
spondence. In  this  article  he  opens  one  window  into  the  Dickinson 
household,  which  we  see  through  the  eyes  of  their  Irish  maid,  Maggie, 
in  simple  and  direct  letters  that  at  the  same  time  recreate  Maggie  her- 
self for  us. 

To  WATCH  Emily  Dickinson  sitting  in  Amherst  amid  the  shades  of  fading 
Puritanism  has  been,  too  often,  the  narrow  critical  frame  for  examining 
the  contents  of  her  surprising  poems  and  equally  surprising  life.  The 
other  evasion  —  to  pretend  that  she  was  totally  isolated  from  all  sur- 
roundings and  to  examine  nothing  in  her  life  but  its  abundant  creativity 
—  leaves  one  just  as  far  from  a  comprehension  of  the  breathing  artist. 
All  these  fractional  truths  and  cramping  legends  tend  to  hold  the  fullness 
of  her  work  and  her  life  out  of  our  reach.  It  is  my  belief  that  the  total 
reality  of  Emily  Dickinson's  circumstances  and  relationships  (as  far  as 
these  can  be  reconstructed)  is  the  best  of  all  levers  to  pry  off  accumulated 
speculation  and  romancing  in  order  that  we  may  see  what  sort  of  woman 
it  was  who  wrote  those  poems.  If  the  result  seems  contradictory  and  un- 
satisfactory and  impossibly  complex,  so  much  the  truer. 

To  manipulate  the  larger  scale  of  reference,  the  tinier  scale  of  the 
immediate,  the  intimate,  even  the  trivial  offers  itself  as  lubrication.  Minu- 
tiae can  give  movement  to  every  sensible  generalization  about  her  life, 
and  no  analyst  of  the  poems  can  ignore  that  life,  whether  or  not  he 
writes  of  it.  To  the  biographer  too  sure  of  what  is  "unimportant,"  to 
the  scorner  of  the  momentary,  the  transiently  trivial,  Dickinson  offers  her 
own  formulation  —  "Forever  is  composed  of  Nows." 

Reprinted  from  New  World  Writing:  Third  Mentor  Selection  (New  York:  The  New 
American  Library,  1953)  by  permission  of  the  author  and  the  publisher.  Copyright, 
1953,  by  Jay  Leyda. 

150 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  151 

One  of  the  several  harmfully  false  aspects  of  the  "Emily  legend"  is 
that  she  lived  and  worked  alone.  The  more  one  looks  into  the  reality 
of  the  matter,  the  larger  grows  her  circle  of  friends,  acquaintances,  cor- 
respondents—  the  more  continuous  her  exchange  with  other  minds  and 
other  temperaments.  She  was  ingenious  enough  to  reduce  the  number 
of  outside  pressures  to  suit  the  work  she  was  determined  to  do,  but  there 
was  a  point  beyond  which  she  could  not  and  would  not  go  in  her 
social  housecleaning.  Amherst  society  bounced  off  the  tight  little  body 
of  Dickinsons,  but  there  was  one  Dickinson  bent  on  absorbing  every 
ray  of  light  beamed  from  any  direction  —  even  from  within  the  two 
Dickinson  houses.  Everyone  who  established  any  degree  of  contact  with 
the  poet  writing  there  requires  investigation.  The  people  who  worked 
for  the  family,  for  example  —  should  they  do  no  more  than  slide  along 
the  backdrop  of  this  drama,  carrying  their  dish  and  pitchfork? 

There  was  no  real  fall  from  the  close  cluster  of  the  Dickinson  family 
until  Austin's  marriage.  The  family  had  known  sickness,  and  death  out- 
side and  on  the  edges,  but  Emily  Dickinson  was  25  before  anyone's 
departure  actually  changed  the  family  structure.  When  Austin  married 
Susan  Gilbert,  the  new  family  thus  installed  in  the  newly  built  house  next 
door  made  both  division  and  increase  in  the  Dickinson  colony  on  Main 
Street,  now  poised  above  both  the  center  of  Amherst  to  the  west  and 
the  Irish  settlement  to  the  east,  down  over  the  new  railroad  tracks.  It 
had  taken  Edward  Dickinson's  sharp  dealing  and  blustering  to  buy  back 
the  Main  Street  brick  house  sold  fifteen  years  before,  in  1840,  to  settle 
the  debts  of  his  father's  estate.  But  Edward  managed;  and  the  easier 
life  of  those  past  fifteen  years  in  the  frame  house  on  Pleasant  Street 
was  changed  to  something  more  rigid  and  formal.  He  had  officially 
retired  from  the  pursuit  of  political  office,  and  now  occupied  the  position 
of  Amherst's  elder  statesman.  The  growing  influence  of  Amherst  Col- 
lege added  to  its  Treasurer's  social  responsibilities;  when  Massachusetts' 
governors  attended  Amherst  commencements,  they  stayed  at  the  Dickin- 
sons, and  Wednesday  tea  at  Hon.  Edward  Dickinson's  during  Commence- 
ment Week  became  a  rite  that  would  alter  only  with  Edward's  death. 

This  all  meant  more  work  —  the  house  was  larger  and  Mrs.  Dickinson 
was  older.  When  she  had  last  lived  in  this  house  she  had  had  three 
young  children,  and  employed  all  the  Delias  and  Catherines  and  Jameses 
who  made  housekeeping  possible.  But  when  the  Dickinsons  had  moved 
to  Pleasant  Street,  the  children  spent  much  of  the  daytime  at  school,  and 
Mrs.  Dickinson  got  along  with  less  "help"  —  the  girls  gradually  assuming 
some  of  the  chores.  Both  sisters  disliked  these  chores,  though  Emily's 
introduction  to  bread-making  at  the  age  of  14  does  not  seem  so  dreadful: 

Mother  thinks  me  not  able  to  confine  myself  to  school  this  term.    She  had 
rather  I  would  exercise,  &  I  can  assure  you  I  get  plenty  of  that  article  by  stay- 


152  Writer 

ing  at  home.  I  am  going  to  learn  to  make  bread  to-morrow.  So  you  may 
imagine  me  with  my  sleeves  rolled  up,  mixing  flour,  milk,  saleratus,  etc.,  with 
a  deal  of  grace  ...  I  think  I  could  keep  house  very  comfortably  if  I  knew  how 
to  cook. 

By  1850  she  did  know  how  to  cook,  but  the  girls  were  learning  resistance, 
or  their  mother  was  weakening,  for  Edward  inserted  in  the  newspaper  a 
somewhat  agonized 

WANTED 

To  hire  a  girl  or  woman  who  is  capable  of 
doing  the  entire  work  of  a  small  family. 

There  were  no  satisfactory  applicants  —  perhaps  the  Irish  girls  who  sought 
"constant  employment"  had  not  yet  arrived  in  Amherst.  With  Lavinia 
away  at  school  and  her  mother  ill,  Emily's  view  of  housework  grows  dim 
indeed,  while  washing  the  noon  dishes  in  the  "sink-room,"  or  preparing 
three  meals  a  day.  There  is  plenty  of  reasonable  self-pity  in  her  letter 
to  Abiah  Root  even  though  it  is  guarded  with  humor: 

I  am  yet  the  Queen  of  the  court,  if  regalia  be  dust,  and  dirt  —  have  three 
loyal  subjects,  whom  I'd  rather  relieve  from  service  —  Mother  is  still  an 
invalid,  tho'  a  partially  restored  one  —  Father  and  Austin  still  clamor  for  food, 
and  I,  like  a  martyr  am  feeding  them.  Wouldn't  you  love  to  see  me  in  these 
bonds  of  great  despair,  looking  around  my  kitchen,  and  praying  for  kind 
deliverance,  and  declaring  by  "Omai's  beard"  I  never  was  in  such  a  plight? 
My  kitchen  I  think  I  called  it,  God  forbid  that  it  was,  or  ever  shall  be  my  own 
—  God  keep  me  from  what  they  call  households,  except  that  bright  one  of 
"faith"! 

Her  talent  for  baking,  at  least,  was  carried  to  the  brick  house  in  1855, 
and  she  played  the  roles  of  prize-winner  (75c)  and  judge  in  successive 
Cattle  Shows  —  Division  of  Rye  and  Indian  Bread.  Perhaps  because  her 
father  demanded  that  she  be  the  sole  author  of  all  his  bread,  these  talents 
were  not  displayed  so  publicly  thereafter.  Never  a  "waited-upon"  girl, 
Emily  must  have  been  the  most  relieved  member  of  the  household  when 
they  acquired  their  first  steady  maid. 

Irish-born  Margaret  O'Brien  may  have  joined  the  Dickinsons  on  Pleasant 
Street,  but  she  was  a  fixture  of  the  brick  house  —  just  Emily's  age  when 
they  moved  there  —  and  recognized  her  own  power  inside  those  walls. 
In  early  October  Margaret  would  object  "to  furnace  heat  on  account  of 
bone  decrepitudes,  so  I  dwell  in  my  bonnet  and  suffer  comfortably," 
Emily  once  reported.  When  away  from  home,  Emily  sent  back  soothing 
messages  to  Margaret,  but  showed  no  especial  affection  for  her,  and  when 
Margaret  married  and  left  in  1865,  Emily  wrote  to  her  friend,  Mrs.  Hol- 
land: 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  153 

Besides  wiping  dishes  for  Margaret,  I  wash  them  now,  while  she  becomes 
Mrs.  Lawler,  vicarious  papa  to  four  previous  babes.  Must  she  not  be  an 
adequate  bride? 

I  winced  at  her  loss,  because  I  was  in  the  habit  of  her,  and  even  a  new 
rolling-pin  has  an  embarrassing  element,  but  to  all  except  anguish  the  mind 
soon  adjusts. 

It  was  some  time  before  Margaret  was  permanently  replaced;  meanwhile 
a  succession  of  trial  maids  passed  through  the  house  — the  Dickinsons 
were  not  comfortable  employers.  And  there  were  other  jobs  to  be  done 
for  the  Main  Street  house:  Horace  Church,  in  control  of  orchard  and 
meadow,  was  pure  Yankee  to  judge  by  the  recording  of  his  ripe  speech 
("Squire,  ef  the  Frost  is  the  Lord's  Will,  I  don't  popose  to  stan  in  the 
way  of  it")  that  Emily  sent  to  Mrs.  Holland  at  the  time  of  his  death. 
There  was  also  a  procession  of  seamstresses  —  professionally  quiet  and 
always  changing,  because,  as  one  of  them  said,  "The  Dickinsons  didn't 
like  strangers  .  .  .  Outsiders  weren't  welcome  there." 

One  entire  family  was  semi-attached  to  the  house.  Richard  and  Ann 
Mathews  were  immigrants  from  England  who  lived  behind  the  Pleasant 
Street  house,  and  whose  sons  and  daughters  fell  victim  to  the  diseases 
of  poverty  nearly  as  fast  as  they  came.  Our  poet's  interest  in  birth  and 
death  could  have  been  trained  in  the  Mathews  shack  —  during  her  life- 
time sixteen  Mathews  children  were  born,  and  nine  died.  The  Mathews 
boys  who  survived  headed  the  large  and  fluid  corps  of  Miss  Emily's  mes- 
sengers, which  included  Johnnie  Beston,  the  Kelley  boys,  and  many  others. 
But  Pat  Mathews  (baptized  Francis  Joseph)  had  a  knack  for  trouble  that 
must  have  especially  endeared  him  to  Miss  Emily: 

Accident.  —  A  horse  became  unmanageable  in  the  street  on  Tuesday  eve- 
ning about  10  o'clock,  near  Dea.  Mack's,  in  consequence  of  the  music  of  the 
band  employed  by  the  serenaders,  and  plunged  in  among  a  parcel  of  boys, 
throwing  down  the  son  [Pat]  of  Mr.  Richard  Matthews,  —  a  boy  about  8 
years  of  age,  and  cutting  a  gash  in  the  back  of  his  head  five  or  six  inches  in 
length.  The  wound  was  dressed  by  Dr.  Smith  .  .  .  The  same  boy  came  very 
near  being  killed  at  the  depot  only  a  few  days  since. 

From  this  date  Emily's  letters  to  her  brother,  then  at  Harvard  Law  School, 
and  to  his  fiancee,  visiting  her  family  in  Geneva,  New  York,  report  regu- 
larly on  Pat's  condition.  The  death  of  another  Mathews  child,  Harriet, 
brought  a  bleak  November  letter  to  the  Hollands: 

I  cant  stay  any  longer  in  a  world  of  death.  Austin  is  ill  of  fever.  I  buried  my 
garden  last  week  —  our  man,  Dick,  lost  a  little  girl  through  the  scarlet  fever. 
I  thought  perhaps  that  you  were  dead  ...  Ah!  dainty  —  dainty  Death!  Ah! 
democratic  Death!  Grasping  the  proudest  zinnia  from  my  purple  garden,  — 
then  deep  to  his  bosom  calling  the  serf's  child! 
Say,  is  he  everywhere?  Where  shall  I  hide  my  things?  Who  is  alive? 


154  Writer 

When  her  uncle,  Loring  Norcross,  died,  she  sent  his  daughters  sympathy 
from  everyone  she  saw,  including  Dick  and  Ann: 

Even  Dick's  wife,  simple  dame,  with  a  kitchen  full,  and  the  grave  besides,  if 
little  ragged  ones,  wants  to  know  "more  about"  you,  and  follows  Mother  to 
the  door,  who  has  called  with  bundle. 

Dick  says,  in  his  wise  way,  he  "shall  always  be  interested  in  them  young 
ladies."  One  little  young  lady  of  his  own,  you  know,  is  in  Paradise.  That 
makes  him  tenderer-minded. 

Nineteenth-century  journalists  thought  that  Ireland  would  be  emptied, 
deserted,  so  steady  was  the  stream  of  Irish  to  America.  What  awaited 
them  here  bore  so  little  resemblance  to  paradise  that  it  is  hard  to  realize 
that  famine  and  rent  laws  could  have  produced  a  hell  by  comparison 
with  the  alien  terrors  of  American  cities  and  villages.  In  a  city  the  new 
arrivals  had  a  fighting  chance,  but  those  who  left  the  crowded  coastal 
cities  for  the  inland  towns  of  New  England  in  the  1850s  found  the  same 
poverty  of  opportunity  that  there  confronted  the  Jew,  the  Negro,  and 
those  Chinese  imported  by  a  North  Adams  shoe  manufacturer  who  had 
heard  hopefully  that  Chinese  eat  very  little.  As  a  group  the  immigrant 
Irish  had  even  fewer  freedoms  than  American  women. 

Every  fence  was  employed  to  isolate  the  Irishman  from  the  community; 
his  religion,  of  course,  made  an  excellent  barrier  in  the  tightly  buttoned 
Congregationalist  villages  of  western  Massachusetts;  the  only  political 
parties  that  offered  him  any  pride  were  the  enemies  of  the  dominant 
Whigs;  if  he  had  a  taste  for  irony,  he  would  have  appreciated  that  the 
whole  English  repertoire  of  Celtiphobiac  humor  and  contempt  had  been 
imported  for  development  in  the  American  press  —  with  such  an  advanced 
newspaper  as  the  Springfield  Daily  Republican  being  jocular  about  any 
local  Irish  tragedy,  or  with  such  a  civilized  magazine  as  Scribner's  Monthly, 
even  as  late  as  the  70s,  supporting  its  shabby  Irish  anecdotes  with  threaten- 
ing editorials. 

A  symptom  of  the  social  level  to  which  the  Irish  community  was  con- 
fined in  Amherst  is  the  cavalier  treatment  of  the  "alien"  Irish  names  in  its 
press  and  town  records.  One  family  was  variously  reported  and  recorded 
as  Scanlan,  Scanlin,  Scanel,  Scanelly,  etc.,  though  it  seems  to  have  been 
always  clear  that  their  name  was  Scannell.  It  was  Dennis  Scannell  who 
came  to  work  in  the  barns  and  gardens  of  both  Dickinson  houses  at  some 
time  in  the  mid-1870s.  The  death  from  typhoid  of  his  wife  Mary  in  1876 
produced  a  not  unreasonable  crisis  in  his  affairs  that  the  Dickinsons  helped 
him  to  weather.  That  something  was  going  wrong  appeared  more  than 
a  year  after  that  death  when  Emily  Dickinson  sent  a  half-warning,  half- 
laughing  message  to  her  nephew: 

Dennis  was  happy  yesterday,  and  it  made  him  graceful  —  I  saw  him  waltzing 
with  the  Cow,  and  suspected  his  status,  but  he  afterward  started  for  your 
House  in  a  frame  that  was  unmistakable  — 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  155 

You  told  me  he  hadn't  tasted  Liquor  since  his  Wife's  decease  —  then  she 
must  have  been  living  at  six  o'clock  last  Evening  — 
I  fear  for  the  rectitude  of  the  Bam  — 

A  Christmas  later  the  Scannell  difficulties  worsened,  this  time  rating  local 
newspaper  attention: 

Jerry  Scanlan,  a  lad  of  14  summers,  who  has  suddenly  disappeared  from 
home  once  or  twice  and  then  returned  several  days  after,  wandered  away  a 
few  days  ago  and  his  father,  Dennis,  was  summoned  to  Springfield,  yesterday 
.  .  .  This  morning's  Republican  states  that  Mr.  Burt  refused  to  give  the  boy  up 
to  his  father  after  investigating  the  case  .  .  . 

Miss  Dickinson's  comment  on  this,  in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Holland: 

A  Little  Boy  ran  away  from  Amherst  a  few  Days  ago,  and  when  asked 
where  he  was  going,  replied,  "Vermont  or  Asia."  .  .  .  My  pathetic  Crusoe  — 

But  things  were  somehow  worked  out  —  perhaps  "arranged"  by  the  pas- 
sionate, influential  Austin  —  for  Dennis  stayed  to  die  in  the  service  of  "the 
other  house"  —  with  unusual  death-bed  attentions  from  Austin,  and  an 
obituary-testimonial  written  by  Susan  for  the  town's  paper. 

Another  Irish  family  watched  by  Emily  was  to  lose  a  daughter  —  and 
Emily  wrote  to  her  Norcross  cousins  of  the  death  of  Margaret  Kelley,  in 
1872: 

Little  Irish  Maggie  went  to  sleep  this  morning  at  six  o'clock,  just  the  time 
Grandpa  rises,  and  will  rest  in  the  grass  at  Northampton  to-morrow.  She  has 
had  a  hard  sickness,  but  her  awkward  little  life  is  saved  and  gallant  now.  Our 
Maggie  is  helping  her  mother  put  her  in  the  cradle. 

By  this  time  "our  Maggie"  knew  that  she  was  in  the  Dickinson  house 
to  stay.  It  was  almost  four  years  before  the  gap  in  the  household,  left 
by  Margaret  O'Brien's  marriage,  was  filled,  and  the  young  woman  who 
came  in  March  1869  was  to  be  the  pillar  of  the  home  and  a  blessing  to 
Miss  Emily  and  Miss  Vinnie.  Margaret  Maher  was  more  than  cook  and 
maid  to  the  Dickinson  sisters;  for  both  she  was  a  protective  bulwark  — 
keeping  intrusion  from  the  poet,  and  pain  from  the  poet's  sister.  Emily 
Dickinson's  letters  show  a  more  active  function  for  Maggie,  too  —  a  fount 
of  stubbornness  and  decision  and  invincible  belief.  Her  healthy  presence 
made  her  as  vital  to  the  skeptic  poet  as  any  member  of  "the  peculiar  race" 
of  Dickinsons.  Yet  Maggie  Maher  first  entered  the  house  for  a  brief  time, 
while  waiting  for  a  better  job,  and  was  most  reluctant  to  stay. 

Past  20,  she  was  well  equipped  for  independence:  with  her  sister  and 
brothers  she  had  made  the  journey  from  Parish  Kilusty  in  Tipperary. 
The  boys  may  have  come  to  Amherst  to  help  build  the  railroad  that  was 
begun  with  so  much  jubilation  and  mouth-watering  commercial  prospects 


156  Writer 

in  1852.  When  settled,  Maggie,  perhaps  alone,  returned  to  Ireland  to 
bring  their  father  and  mother  to  the  new  Amherst  home.  The  older  daugh- 
ter Mary  soon  married  an  earlier  Irish  arrival,  Thomas  Kelley,  and  when 
her  parents  died  and  her  brothers  departed,  home  meant  the  Kelley 
house  to  Maggie.  But  the  Maher  family  was  intact  when  the  youngster 
Maggie  took  her  first  job,  working  for  the  Boltwoods. 

Against  the  considerable  odds  of  time  and  chance  Maggie's  letters  to 
Mrs.  Clarinda  Boltwood  have  been  preserved,  and  in  them  we  can  hear 
her  actual  intonation,  not  only  because  their  Irish  accent  is  recorded 
phonetically,  but  the  very  flow  of  her  straight,  dignified  speech,  is  directly 
attached  to  her  warm  heart  —  "y°ure  letter  this  wet  evening  was  a  grate 
treete  to  me  for  I  watched  for  it  very  eagrly"  and  "  I  eather  dreaming  or 
thinking  of  you  I  dont  know  what  the  reason"  and  "youre  letter  of  Mon- 
day came  to  me  last  night  I  was  glad  to  see  youre  hand  Writting  on  the 
out  side  and  to  read  what  it  cantain  on  insoid  .  .  ." 

When  the  younger  Boltwoods  left  Amherst  for  Hartford,  Maggie  Maher 
took  other  work,  though  always  with  the  hope  of  rejoining  her  beloved 
family: 

You  spoke  of  I  going  to  work  to  youre  mother  with  anny  when  I  get  true 
with  my  one  work  But  I  dont  care  where  a  weeks  wages  go  I  shant  charge  it 
you  you  nede  not  fere  ...  I  dont  wish  to  go  to  Work  untill  I  here  whether 
you  go  or  not  then  I  will  try  to  get  a  plase 

She  did  get  to  Hartford,  but  a  few  months  later  —  in  June  1868  —  a 
double  tragedy  brought  her  back  to  Amherst  and  kept  her  there: 

(June  4) 

My  letter  will  give  you  a  grate  surpris  But  it  is  hard  for  me  My  dear  Father 
is  so  bad  that  We  dont  expect  he  to  live  only  a  few  days  so  that  you  see  that 
My  Joy  is  turned  to  griefe  Father  only  New  me  I  am  glad  that  his  reasons 
to  Now  me  and  that  I  am  here  [to]  take  care  of  him  as  poor  sister  is  Worn 
out  from  Care  It  is  Write  that  I  should  care  My  parants  as  there  is  now  other 
thing  that  I  can  do  for  them 

Her  father  died  and  within  the  week: 

(June  16) 

This  is  a  World  of  trouble  our  trouble  was  Never  so  much  as  it  is  at  preasant. 
My  dear  Brother  Thomas  [Kelley]  was  almost  killed  last  saterday  at  4  o  clock 
he  still  lives  But  we  dont  know  how  long  he  may  My  dear  sister  what  will 
she  do  the  father  of  seven  children  the  lord  may  comfort  her  .  .  . 

he  fell  30  feet  from  a  building  ...  I  dont  know  whether  it  is  day  or  night 
sence  I  left  hartford 
(June  25) 

Brother  is  a  little  more  comfortabler  than  he  have  been  sence  he  was  hurt 
docter  Dole  tends  him  2  a  day  his  arm  was  not  set  yet  but  it  will  on  Sunday 
next  with  gods  help  we  cant  tell  how  it  is  going  to  be  yet  all  say  that  it  got  to 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  157 

be  cut  of [f]  ...  the  dath  of  dear  father  lies  in  a  cloud  of  sadness  on  me  and 
I  can't  get  over  it  he  died  in  my  armes  and  I  never  can  forget  it  I  must  hope 
he  is  better  of  [f]  .  .  .  But  how  nice  it  would  be  to  have  all  friends  lay  down 
and  die  so  that  we  would  not  have  to  suffer  the  loss  of  those  that  gone 

Maggie  stayed  in  Amherst,  near  her  broken  family;  among  her  several 
employers  was  Edward  Dickinson.  The  senior  Boltwoods,  still  living  in 
Amherst,  were  irritated  to  find  their  Maggie  committed,  even  temporarily, 
to  the  Dickinsons  —  there  was  a  scene,  reported  by  Maggie  to  the  junior 
Boltwoods  in  Hartford: 

(1869,  March  2) 

...  I  waited  all  this  time  to  tell  you  when  I  would  go  to  California  No, 
that  if  nothing  dont  happen  to  me  I  will  go  the  first  of  May  ...  I  will  lave  my 
plase  the  first  of  April  to  get  ready  My  oldest  Brother  will  meet  me  in 
Panama  ...  I  was  not  in  to  father  Boltwood  sence  I  went  to  see  you  only 
once  and  then  no  one  spoke  to  me  father  went  true  the  kitchen  But  he  did  not 
spak  to  me  .  .  .  the  reason  a  I  was  told  the[y]  have  to  me  is  when  I  left  Mrs. 
tolcott  they  came  down  after  me  to  go  to  work  there  But  I  could  not  go  for  I 
was  ingaged  to  Mr.  Dickenson  2  weeks  before  ...  I  dont  want  to  disapoint  any 
person  or  Brake  my  word  if  i  be  Poor  and  working  for  my  living  I  will  always 
try  to  do  rite  .  .  . 

She  has  no  eagerness  to  stay  with  the  Dickinsons: 

...  I  like  it  very  well  But  it  is  not  my  home  my  home  is  with  you  I  am  as 
strange  here  as  if  I  came  here  to  work  yester 

Vinnie's  cats,  with  whom  Emily  was  always  at  war,  were  getting  on  Mag- 
gie's nerves,  too.  But  she  was  finding  it  harder  to  leave  the  Dickinsons 
than  she  had  guessed.  The  California  plan  had  to  be  forgotten  —  and 
Mr.  Dickinson  had  to  have  his  way. 

(March  24) 

We  have  so  many  cats  to  take  care  of  that  I  would  like  to  have  some  help 
But  for  I  ntend  to  lave  very  sone  I  would  be  very  cross  to  them  But  I  will 
keep  my  temper  for  a  nother  while  I  am  always  very  patient  .  .  .  Brother 
tommy  wrote  to  me  last  week  and  told  me  not  come  out  there  for  there  is  to 
much  sickness  there  he  have  the  eagy  very  bad 

(April  6) 

...  I  have  tried  every  way  to  go  to  hartford  to  live  this  summer  but  I  must 
stay  here  for  the  sumer  I  tried  to  get  a  girl  for  them  But  the[y]  would  not 
take  any  one  that  I  would  get  it  is  what  Mr  Dicksom  said  he  would  Pay  me 
as  much  more  wages  soner  then  let  me  go  so  that  I  have  desided  to  stay  for 
the  Preasent  I  went  to  Pa[l]mer  the  day  that  Mr.  Boltwood  was  up  here  to 
get  the  girl  that  worket  for  them  before  me  and  she  would  come  But  the[y] 
would  not  take  her  .  .  .  But  there  [is]  one  thing  sure  I  will  do  as  I  like  when 


158  Writer 

I  will  get  a  chance  without  giving  much  notice  all  that  is  in  the  house  is  very 
fond  of  me  and  dose  every  thing  for  my  comfort  in  fact  thefy]  are  to  kind  to 
there  help  the  only  reason  that  I  dislike  is  that  I  am  lonsom  in  Amherst  .  .  . 
last  night  that  I  settled  with  Mr.  D  if  I  would  lave  Now  and  go  to  you  it 
would  caus  them  to  be  very  angry  with  us  all  so  we  will  wait  for  a  nother 
time  the[y]  get  very  excited  when  you  write  to  me  for  fere  that  [I]  will  go  to 
you  there  is  one  grate  trouble  that  I  have  not  half  enough  of  work  so  that  I 
must  play  with  the  cats  to  Plase  Miss  Vinny  you  know  how  I  love  cats 

For  Mr.  Dickinson  to  threaten  "to  be  very  angry  with  us  all"  affected  more 
than  Maggie's  income.  Her  niece  Margaret  was  serving  in  "the  other 
house,"  and,  too,  no  vulnerable  person  in  Amherst  wished  to  excite  Mr. 
D's  anger.  The  Boltwoods  were  already  receding  into  a  pink  past: 

(November  2) 

I  think  you  for  youre  kind  offer  and  also  hope  you  will  plas  excuse  me  for 
not  writting  to  you  before  it  was  not  the  reason  that  I  did  not  love  you  for  I 
always  love  you  and  Mr  B  and  the  Boys  and  you  alwas  was  a  kind  mother  to 
me  so  kind  that  I  fere  that  I  Never  could  Pay  you  for  youre  care  and  interest 
in  me  .  .  .  youre  offer  to  me  is  what  I  wold  like  to  do  But  I  cant  lave  Sister 
Mary  this  winter  for  she  needs  me  for  comfort  .  .  . 

But  Maggie  had  found  her  place  in  life  and  history;  Clarinda  Boltwood 
had  lost  a  good  maid  —  Emily  Dickinson  had  found  a  priceless  ally.  A 
letter  written  this  same  month  to  Cousin  Louise  Norcross  shows  us  that 
she  was  beginning  to  guess  the  value  of  Margaret  Maher  (Tim  is  the 
new  coachman,  and  Dick  the  horse): 

Tim  is  washing  Dick's  feet,  and  talking  to  him  now  and  then  in  an  intimate 
way.  Poor  fellow,  how  he  warmed  when  I  gave  him  your  message!  The  red 
reached  clear  to  his  beard,  he  was  so  gratified;  and  Maggie  stood  as  still  for 
hers  as  a  puss  for  patting.  The  hearts  of  these  poor  people  lie  so  unconcealed 
you  bare  them  with  a  smile. 

There  is  a  family  photograph  of  this  time  that  tells  us  more  about  Mag- 
gie. In  the  center  sits  her  handsome,  one-armed  brother-in-law,  Tom 
Kelley;  on  his  left  is  his  daughter  Margaret,  then  working  for  Austin  and 
Susan;  and  on  his  right  stands  the  pleasantly  sturdy  figure  of  Maggie  — 
wide  mouth,  inquiring  eyes;  both  Margarets  are  wearing  identically  styled 
dresses,  perhaps  giving  the  occasion  for  the  group  photograph. 

The  outwardly  placid  life  of  the  Dickinson  family  was  about  to  ex- 
plode in  a  series  of  crises  from  which  it  would  never  fully  recover  — 
unless  the  transmutation  of  tragedy  into  poetry  can  be  called  "recovery." 
Edward  Dickinson's  brief  return  to  legislative  life,  for  the  railroad's  sake, 
was  unwise:  the  heat  of  argument  and  of  Boston  brought  apoplexy  and 
sudden  death.  His  wife's  dependent  life  was  shattered,  and  on  the  first 
anniversary  of  his  death  she  was  paralyzed  with  a  stroke.  The  lives  of  the 
two  daughters  and  Maggie  now  revolved  around  a  half-lifeless  center 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  159 

that  demanded  their  time  and  attention.  In  the  confusion  something  was 
allowed  to  happen  to  one  of  the  family's  dependents  that  Edward's  chil- 
dren may  never  have  forgiven  themselves:  Dick  Mathews  was  admitted 
to  the  Alms  House,  where  he  died  ten  days  later. 

The  community  of  Amherst  was  aware  that  the  brick  house  on  Main 
Street  housed  the  most  dangerous  type  of  alien  —  a  poet.  And  Emily 
Dickinson  must  have  sensed  the  taboos  placed  around  her,  so  sensitive 
was  she  to  the  atmospheres  and  dramas  of  the  village.  Though  we  would 
call  her  an  "insider,"  to  the  town  she  was  an  "outsider";  and  they  were 
willing  to  believe  any  gossip  or  "revelations"  about  the  Dickinson  sisters: 
madness  was  one  of  the  gentler  accusations.  How  often  Emily  must  have 
looked  at  Maggie  as  a  fellow  exile  —  for  community  snobbery  was  directed 
as  much  against  the  "lower  class"  Irish  as  against  the  "upper  class"  Dick- 
insons, especially  that  queer  writing  woman!  There  is  a  wistful  poem 
written  in  that  house  about  Paradise,  ending: 

Maybe  Eden  aint  so  lonesome 
As  New  England  used  to  be! 

In  1880  there  was  a  scene  that  Emily  Dickinson  had  to  report  to  the 
son  of  her  recently  dead  friend,  Samuel  Bowles: 

Our  friend  your  Father  was  so  beautifully  and  intimately  recalled  Today  that 
it  seemed  impossible  he  had  experienced  the  secret  of  Death  — 

A  servant  who  had  been  with  us  a  long  time  and  had  often  opened  the 
Door  for  him,  asked  me  how  to  spell  "Genius,"  yesterday  —  I  told  her  and 
she  said  no  more  — 

Today,  she  asked  me  what  "Genius"  meant?  I  told  her  none  had  known  — 

She  said  she  read  in  a  Catholic  Paper  that  Mr.  Bowles  was  "the  Genius  of 
Hampshire,"  and  thought  it  might  be  that  past  Gentleman  .  .  . 

I  congratulate  you  upon  his  immortality,  which  is  a  constant  stimulus  to 
my  Household  .  .  . 

As  a  personality  seal  for  the  letter,  she  asked  the  "servant"  —  Maggie  — 
to  address  the  envelope,  a  typically  half-hidden  Dickinsonian  gesture. 
When,  later  in  the  year,  Maggie  was  ill  with  typhoid  fever  at  the  Kelley 
house,  "Her  Grieved  Mistress"  sent  another  typical  gesture  —  few  dared 
to  be  playful  with  the  very  ill. 

The  missing  Maggie  is  much  mourned,  and  I  am  going  out  for  "black" 
to  the  nearest  store. 

All  are  very  naughty,  and  I  am  naughtiest  of  all. 

The  pussies  dine  on  sherry  now,  and  humming-bird  cutlets. 

The  invalid  hen  took  dinner  with  me,  but  a  hen  like  Dr.  T[aylor]'s  horse 
soon  drove  her  away.  I  am  very  busy  picking  up  stems  and  stamens  as  the 
hollyhocks  leave  their  clothes  around. 

What  shall  I  send  my  weary  Maggie?  Pillows  or  fresh  brooks? 


160  Writer 

She  knew  when  not  to  be  playful,  too.   In  the  following  year  she  wrote 
to  her  Norcross  cousins: 

Maggie's  brother  is  killed  in  the  mines,  and  Maggie  wants  to  die,  but  Death 
goes  far  around  to  those  that  want  to  see  him.  If  the  little  cousins  would  give 
her  a  note  —  she  does  not  know  I  ask  it  —  I  think  it  would  help  her  begin, 
that  bleeding  beginning  that  every  mourner  knows. 

Emily  Dickinson  seemed  never  to  tire  of  defining  Maggie's  virtues  and 
qualities,  for  herself  as  well  as  for  her  friends.  To  Mrs.  Holland  she  wrote, 
"Maggie,  good  and  noisy,  the  North  Wind  of  the  Family,  but  Sweets 
without  a  Salt  would  at  last  cloy  — "  and  she  sympathizes  with  the  Nor- 
cross sisters  in  their  new  Cambridge  quarters:  "I  am  glad  the  house- 
keeping is  kinder;  it  is  a  prickly  art.  Maggie  is  with  us  still,  warm  and 
wild  and  mighty  .  .  " 

"With  us  still" —  Maggie  seemed  always  there  —  to  give  emergency 
treatment  when  it  was  inconvenient  to  summon  Dr.  Fish  —  to  feed  Austin 
an  early  breakfast  when  his  own  household  couldn't  be  bothered  —  to 
help  out  "at  the  other  house"  in  a  crisis  —  to  ease  Vinnie  away  from  the 
door  when  an  arousing  enemy  called  —  to  slip  clandestine  letters  under 
the  door  of  Emily's  bedroom  (Emily  aimed  to  make  all  her  correspondence 
so  private  that  it  all  became  slightly  clandestine)  —  to  take  Emily's  excuses, 
in  the  forms  of  clover,  rose  or  jasmine,  to  the  door  when  an  uninvited 
visitor  knocked.  The  friends  of  the  house  knew  Maggie  as  well  as  did 
the  house's  antagonists:  when  Christmas  packages  were  sent  to  the  Dick- 
inson sisters,  something  for  Maggie  was  packed,  too. 

The  instructions  left  by  Emily  Dickinson  for  her  funeral  sound  like  the 
directions  for  a  pageant  of  her  allegiances.  Following  her  father  she  was 
also  to  avoid  the  hearse,  with  its  mock  solemnity;  he  had  been  borne  to 
the  graveyard  by  the  professors  and  successes  of  Amherst;  she  asked  to  be 
carried  by  the  six  Irishmen  she  had  known.  Led  by  Thomas  Kelley  of  the 
single  strong  arm,  Dennis  Scannell,  Stephen  Sullivan,  Patrick  Ward,  Daniel 
Moynihan  and  Dennis  Cashman  carried  Emily  Dickinson  to  the  place  she 
still  occupies.  When  Edward  Dickinson  was  buried,  the  town  had  closed 
in  his  honor,  but  his  daughter's  plan  was  quieter:  she  asked  to  be  carried 
out  the  back  door,  around  through  the  garden,  through  the  opened  barn 
from  front  to  back,  and  then  through  the  grassy  fields  to  the  family  plot, 
always  in  sight  of  the  house. 

When  Emily  Dickinson's  poems  found  an  audience,  and  a  photograph  of 
her  was  needed,  Maggie  offered  a  daguerreotype  that  the  family  (includ- 
ing the  sitter)  had  disliked  and  discarded.  Without  her  love  we  would  not 
have  the  only  photographic  image  of  a  great  poet. 

There  is  a  letter  that  Margaret  Maher  wrote  in  1891,  five  years  after  the 
poet's  death: 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  161 

Vinnia  has  not  being  very  well  this  last  few  weeks.  .  .  to  tell  the  truth  of  it 
she  is  not  strong,  and  cant  get  a  long  with  things  that  she  have  no  write  to  be 
troubled  with  it  will  always  be  so  as  far  as  I  see  all  are  well  around  here  But 
a  few  are  happy  .  .  . 

We  have  5  cats  2  in  the  house  and  3  in  the  Barren  all  well  and  good 
apetited  so  far  .  .  . 

YOUR  SERVENT 


The  Letter 

3-fo/mes  •  4904— 


The  first  line  of  this  poem  is  an  allusion  to  one  of  the  snatches  of 
song  in  the  mad  scenes  of  Shakespeare's  King  Lear:  "Childe  Roland  to 
the  dark  tower  came.  .  .  ."  This  haunting  fragment  has  stirred  the 
imagination  of  later  poets,  among  them  Robert  Browning  and  Louis 
MacNeice,  to  invent  dramatic  situations  to  explain  it.  Childe  Harold 
is  the  romantic  wandering  hero  of  Byron's  famous  narrative  poem, 
Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage.  Mr.  Holmes  has  fused  the  two  allusions, 
to  suggest  the  feeling  that  going  to  the  postoffice  for  a  letter  may  be  as 
stirring  an  adventure  as  the  sort  those  heroes  were  engaged  upon. 
"Childe":  a  youth  of  noble  birth. 

CHILDE  HAROLD  to  the  dark  tower,  L-two 
Four  turns,  R-three,  and  the  notches 
Lined  up.  I  guess  through  beveled  glass 
Miracles  by  mail,  air-mail,  all  mine, 
Checks  and  love,  if  dial  to  dial  matches. 

Silent  as  a  safe-cracker,  I  twirl  and  try, 
Intent  as  the  other  burglars,  and  ahl  it 
Opens.   They  too  break  in  on  their  lives. 
They  clutch  stuffing  from  the  mailbags. 
Rip  and  read,  then  and  there,  no  matter  what. 

Reprinted  from  New  Poems  by  American  Poets,  edited  by  Rolfe  Humphries.  Copy- 
right, 1953,  by  Ballantine  Books,  Inc. 


162  Writer 


They  stand  around  like  the  spaced  columns 
That  hold  up  public  buildings,  stunned 
By  something  not  in,  or  in,  the  envelope. 
They  go  away,  and  more  move  up,  robbers 
Rubbing  the  dials  for  a  break  long  planned. 

I  never  read  letters  in  the  post  office. 
I  carry  them  to  the  cottage.   There,  alone, 
I  divide  the  loot  with  myself,  not  fifty-fifty. 
Counterfeit.    Dead-end.    Non-negotiable. 
But  one  is  currency.   One  is  mine.  One. 


3.  SHAPING  IDEAS 

The  Shape  of  Ideas    & 

Rudolf  Jlescb  •  i9ii- 


Suppose  you  have  all  the  materials  for  a  piece  of  writing  assembled 
in  your  head  or  in  your  notes.  Jfjft  isn't  a  simple  chronological  narra- 
tive, hovv  dp  you  arrange  the  materials  for  presentation?  Most  hand- 
books of  composition  go  into  the  mysteries  and  technicalities  of  formal 
outlining  at  this  point,  and  certainly  the  piece  must  be  put  into  some 
logical  shape.  But  why  one  rather  than_  another?  The  books  have 
little  to  say  about  the  agonized  mental  churning  that  usually  has  to  go 
on  before  the  ideas  take  shape  out  of  their  chaos.  Flesch  suggests  a  few 
principles  of  shaping  that  may  help  diminish  the  agony. 


Success  in  solving  the  problem  depends  on  choosing  the  right  aspect, 
on  attacking  the  fortress  from  its  accessible  side. 

GEORGE  POLYA 


WHEN  the  Saturday  Evening  Post,  in  its  article  series  on  American  cities, 
got  around  to  St.  Louis,  it  assigned  Associate  Editor  Jack  Alexander  to  the 
job.  Alexander  went  to  St.  Louis,  spent  ten  days  collecting  material,  and 
returned  to  his  desk  in  Philadelphia.  But  he  wasn't  yet  ready  to  write.  He 
wasn't  even  ready  to  draw  up  an  outline.  According  to  the  Saturday  Eve- 
ning Post,  this  is  what  he  did:  "His  first  job  was  to  organize  all  his  in- 

Rudolf  Flesch,  The  Art  of  Readable  Writing  (New  York:  Harper  &  Brothers,  1949). 
Copyright,  1949,  by  Rudolf  Flesch. 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  163 

formation  and  ideas.  It  was  partly  a  mental  and  partly  a  mechanical 
process.  He  spread  out  his  typewritten  notes  on  a  big  table.  Gradually  he 
sorted  his  notes  —  and,  more  important,  the  facts  and  ideas  in  his  head  — 
into  classifications.  This  process  is-hard  fo^-Jack  ta^plfti»r  he- doesn't 
know^'ust  what  happened.  Somehow,  after  a  day  of  work,  he  got  to  the 
point  where  he  could  think  through  the  whole  mess.  He  was  ready  to 
start  planning  the  actual  writing  job." 

Think  of  what  this  means.  After  he  had  collected  his  raw  material,  and 
before  he  felt  ready  to  make  an  outline,  Mr.  Alexander  put  in  a  full  day's 
work  getting  his  ideas  in  shape.  This  seasoned  professional  writer  assigned 
a  full  work  day  to  what  amounts  to  ]^5t  sitting  and  tbin^{ng 

This  may  seem  strange  to  you.  Yet  actually  it  isn't  strange  at  all.  Every 
professional  writer  knows  that  this  period  of  just-sitting-and-thinking  be- 
tween legwork  and  outline  is  the  most  important  part  of  the  whole  writing 
process.  It's  what  makes  a  piece  of  writing  what  it  is. 

You  won't  find  anything  about  this  in  the  textbooks.  Students  are  not 
supposed  to  just  srt  and  think.  Open  any  English  composition  textbook 
and  you'll  find  that  note-taking  is  followed  by  outlining  without  even  a 
five-minute  break  for  a  smoke. 

If  you  want  to  find  out  about  this  mysterious  business  of  just-sitting-and 
thinking,  you  have  to  go  to  the  psychologists.  They  know  quite  a  bit  about 
it;  but  the  trouble  is  that  they  don't  write  English  but  their  own  special 
language.  They  talk  about  recentering,  restructuring,  and  configurations, 
and  the  whole  school  of  psychology  that  deals  with  these  matters  goes  by 
the  formidable  name  ofGestalt  Psychologtf. 

Let  me  do  a  little  translating  for  you.  In  the  original  German,  the  word 
Gestalt  means  nothing  particularly  exciting;  it  simply  means  shape.  And 
that's  what  this  whole  business  is  about:  when  you  do  this  kind  of  just- 
sitting-and-thinking,  you  jire  trymgjo  grasp  the  shaye^of  your  ideas.  The 
configurations,  the  recentering,  the  restructuring  —  all  these  words  mean 
that  your  mind  is  operating  just  like  your  eye  —  or  your  camera  —  when 
it  is  looking  at  an  object.  To  see  the  object  clearly,  you  have  to  find  the 
right  fogus,  the  right  perspective, Jhe  right  angle  of  vision.  Only  when  all 
tKesethings  are  taken  care  of~do  you  really  see  what  the  object  is  like. 

The  same  way,  in  your  writing  you  must  first  go  over  your  material  in 
your  mind,  trying  to  find  the  focus,  the  perspective,  the  angle  of  vision 
that  will  make  you  see  clearly  the  shape  of  whatever  it  ts  you  are  writing 
about.  There  has  to  be  one  point  that  is  sharply  in  focus,  and  a  clear 
grouping  of  everything  else  around  it.  Once  you  see  this  clearly,  your 
reader  will  see  it  too.  And  that,  the  shape  of  yourjdeas,jsusually ^ 
going,  {p.  £arry_&way  from  his  reading.  ,  ""77, 

I  know  of  course  that  all  this  still  sounds  vague.  But  don't  worry:  From 
this  point  on  we  are  getting  down  to  brass  tacks. 

The  most  widely  used  device  for  getting  ideas  in  shape  is  to  buttonhole 
some  unsuspecting  victim— 1  the  kind  of  person  who  is  apt  to  read  later 


164  Writer 

what  you  have  written  —  and  to  rehearse  your  ideas  aloud.  This  has  two 
advantages:  first,  it  forces  you  to  funnel  your  ideas  into  a  limited  number 
of  words;  and  second,  the  other  person  will  tell  you  what  your  ideas  look 
like  from  where  he  sits.  Allan  Nevins,  the  historian,  puts  it  this  way: 
"Catch  a  friend  who  is  interested  in  the  subject  and  talk  out  what  you 
have  learned,  at  length.  In  this  way  you  discover  facts  of  interpretation 
that  you  might  have  missed,  points  of  argument  that  had  been  unrealized, 
and  the  form  most  suitable  for  the  story  you  have  to  tell." 

This  is  fine,  except  that  Mr.  Nevins  says  "at  length."  Actually,  the 
rule  here  is,  the  shorter  the  better.  If  you  can  manage  to  spring  your  ideas 
on  your  friend  in  one  sentence,  then  you  have  found  the  sharpest  focus  of 
them  all.  Everything  else  will  arrange  itself  around  this  one  sentence  or 
phrase  almost  automatically.  This  is  what  newspapermen  call  writing 
"from  the  headline"  or  "from  the  lead."  It's  a  useful  trick. 

Let  me  give  you  a  few  examples  of  this.  The  most  famous  editorial  on 
the  atomic  bomb  was  written  by  the  editor  of  the  Saturday  Review  of 
Literature,  Mr.  Norman  Cousins.  It  was  firmly  built  upon  an  inspired 
title:  "Modern  Man  is  Obsolete."  The  best-known  advertisement  of  the 
same  year  was  run  by  the  Chesapeake  &  Ohio  Railway.  It  proceeded 
straight  from  an  unbeatable  headline:  "A  Hog  Can  Cross  the  Country 
Without  Changing  Trains  —  But  YOU  Can't!" 

Or  think  of  the  remarkable  sentence-building  career  of  Mr.  Elmer 
Wheeler,  the  author  of  Tested  Sentences  that  Sell.  This  man  spends  his 
life  thinking  up  sentences  that  will  bring  salestalk  into  sharp  focus.  In  his 
book  he  proudly  tells  of  the  millions  of  square  clothespins  that  were  sold 
hvith  the  words:  "They  won't  roll!" 

But  to  come  back:  A  good  way  of  using  someone  else  for  focus  and 
perspective  is  to  gut.,siicEr£  person  right  into  your  piece  of  writing.  You 
present  youFf acts  and  ideas  as  seen  by  an  observer  with  a  detache$  point 
of  view.  This  will  make  things  clearer  to  yourself  and  will  help  your  reader 
in  catching  on.  Take,  for  instance,  the  following  "Duet  on  a  Bus"  by 
Douglas  Moore: 

I  overheard  a  bus  conversation  the  other  day.  It  was  a  long  one,  lasting 
from  Grant's  Tomb  to  Forty-second  Street.  A  young  Frenchman,  recently  ar- 
rived, was  apparently  being  shown  the  city  by  a  lady  of  middle  age  who  took 
her  culture  as  a  heavy  responsibility  ...  It  went  something  like  this: 

"I  shall  be  happy  to  attend  the  opening  of  the  opera." 

"Yes,  it  couldn't  be  nicer.  'Faust/  you  know." 

"It  will  be  amusing  to  hear  'Faust'  in  English." 

"Oh,  this  won't  be  in  English.  All  our  operas  are  done  in  the  original  lan- 
guage." 

"Why?   Do  American  audiences  understand  French?" 

"No,  but  it  is  much  more  artistic  that  way  and  the  singers'  French  is 
usually  so  poor  even  French  audiences  wouldn't  be  able  to  understand  them." 

"The  singers  aren't  French  then?" 

"Only  one  or  two.  Albanese  will  be  Marguerite  and  Pinza  Mephistopheles. 
They  are  both  Italian." 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  165 

"What  happens  in  the  Italian  operas?    Are  they  sung  by  Italians?" 

"Well,  now  let's  see.  In  'Rigoletto'  there's  Tibbett,  Kullman  as  the  Duke, 
Antoine  as  Gilda,  and  Kaskas  as  Maddalena." 

"They're  all  Americans,  aren't  they?" 

"So  they  are.  Well,  they  sing  Italian  anyway.  Isn't  it  wonderful  so  many 
of  our  best  singers  are  American  now." 

"It  is  an  amusing  idea,  operas  in  the  original  language.  Is  'Boris  Godounov' 
sung  in  Russian?" 

"No,  that  would  be  too  hard  except  for  Kipnis.  He's  Russian.  The  rest  of 
them  sing  Italian." 

"You  mean  at  the  same  time?" 

"Yes,  most  of  them  are  not  Italians  but  it  seems  a  good  language  to  use." 

"Why?" 

"Well,  you  see  in  the  old  days  there  were  really  two  companies  at  the 
Metropolitan,  the  German  and  the  Italian.  I  suppose  when  this  opera  came 
into  the  repertory  the  Italian  wing  sang  it." 

"Why  don't  they  sing  it  in  English?  That  is  closer  to  the  Russian  in  sound 
and  the  audience  might  understand  it  better." 

"Well,  we  have  tried  some  operas  in  English  but  I  don't  believe  the  public 
likes  it." 

"Why  not?  Are  they  afraid  they  might  catch  a  few  words?" 

And  so  oru^(Sorry  I  can't  print  the  whole  thing  here.)  You  see  how 
useful  thp  stoogeYvith  another  viewpoint  is  to  a  writer. 

iTut  ot :  frHuse'-you  canTcfartfais  suit  uf  thing  atHhe-tinre.  What  else  can 
you  do  to  gain  focus  and  perspective? 

It  depends  on  the  material  you  are  working  on.  Often  the  answer  will 
suggest  itself.  Whenever  you  are  writing  about  a  group  or  an  organization, 
for  instance,  the  naturaljthing  to jiojsjto  focus  on  a  typical  membejrjjf  the 
group.  Start  by  describing  him  (or  her)  and  go  on  from  tKere. 

TEis  sounds  simple,  but  there  is  a  pitfall  in  it.  It's  hard  to  look  away 
from  the  eye-catching,  outstanding  —  and  therefore  not  typical  —  members 
of  the  group.  I  once  talked  to  a  writer  who  was  working  on  an  employee 
pension-plan  booklet.  He  had  all  details  worked  out  for  a  "given  case"  — 
but  his  "given  case"  was  a  $10,000-a-year  man!  This  meant  that  he  got 
nice  round  figures  when  it  came  to  working  out  percentages;  but  it  also 
meant  that  the  example  didn't  mean  a  thing  to  the  average  $3,000-a-year 
employee. 

So  keep  your  eyes  on  the  ground  when  you  use  fhft  typjj^]-pftrson  Aftyfan. 
See  what  Bernard  DeVoto  did  when  he  had  to  cover  an  American  Medical 
Association  meeting: 

Back  home  —  which  might  have  been  Iowa  or  West  Virginia  or  Oklahoma 
—  they  probably  called  him  Doc,  and  most  likely  Old  Doc;  for  he  would  be 
close  to  seventy,  his  untidy  Van  Dyke  was  white,  his  shoulders  were  stooped 
and  there  was  a  slight  tremor  in  his  fingers.  Seersucker  will  not  hold  a  crease 
and  God  knows  how  old  his  straw  hat  was.  He  liked  to  stand  in  a  corner  at 
one  of  the  pharmaceutical  exhibits  in  the  Technical  Exposition.  Behind  him 
were  large  charts  showing  the  molecular  structure  of  the  firm's  newest  product, 


166  Writer 

photographs  three  feet  by  four  showing  how  it  was  synthesized,  and  equally 
large  graphs  with  red  and  green  lines  curling  round  the  black  to  show  its 
results  in  the  treatment  of  anything  you  please  —  rheumatic  fever,  hyper- 
tension, duodenal  ulcer. 

Doc  stood  there  and  talked  with  the  young  man  from  the  drug  house  who 
had  all  the  statistics  by  heart  and  because  he  had  been  trained  in  public  re- 
lations never  gave  a  sign  of  boredom  but  went  on  smiling  and  nodding.  Doc 
described  his  cases  back  home  and  told  how  he  handled  rheumatic  fever  or 
hypertension,  and  said  he  had  always  got  good  results  from  potassium  iodide, 
and  ended  by  taking  out  a  pad  and  writing  down  his  favorite  prescriptions  for 
the  young  man's  consideration. 

It  must  have  been  a  different  Doc  from  hour  to  hour  and  from  exhibit  to 
exhibit  but  he  always  seemed  the  same.  One  observer  remembers  him  as 
clearly  as  anything  else  at  the  Centennial  Celebration  (and  ninety-seventh 
annual  meeting)  of  the  American  Medical  Association,  at  Atlantic  City  in  the 
second  week  of  June. 

Everybody  else  was  there  too  .  .  . 

Sometimes  this  device  is  strikingly  effective  in  a  situation  where  you 
wouldn't  think  it  possible  to  arrive  at  any  average.  Look  at  this  (from 
John  Gunther's  Inside  U.S.A.): 

Composite  Portrait  of  a  New  England  Legislator 

He  is  tall,  gaunt,  wrinkled,  and  there  are  great  reserves  of  character  in  the 
face  and  raspy  voice.  He  earns  a  living  in  a  garage,  and  also  owns  a  bit  of 
real  estate.  His  salary  as  legislator  (which  in  New  Hampshire  would  be  two 
hundred  dollars  a  year  plus  traveling  expenses;  in  Vermont  four  hundred)  is 
an  important  addition  to  his  income.  His  wife  is  a  farmer's  daughter  from  the 
next  county;  they  have  been  married  twenty-four  years  and  have  three  chil- 
dren. The  eldest  son  was  a  carpenter's  mate  first  class,  another  son  is  in  his 
third  year  in  the  public  high  school,  and  is  crazy  about  gliders;  the  daughter 
wants  to  go  to  Vassar.  Our  legislator  has  two  brothers:  one  is  a  lobster  fisher- 
man in  Stony  Creek,  Connecticut,  and  the  other  left  Massachusetts  many 
years  ago,  and  is  believed  now  to  own  a  small  farm  in  Iowa.  Several  genera- 
tions back  there  were  some  complex  marriages  in  the  family;  one  distant  rela- 
tive is  Greek  born,  and  another  married  a  Finn;  but  also  our  legislator  is 
related  to  no  less  a  personage  than  a  former  governor  of  the  state.  He  believes 
in  paying  his  bills  on  the  dot,  in  the  inherent  right  of  his  children  to  a  good 
education,  and  in  common  sense.  He  gives  ten  dollars  a  year  to  the  Red 
Cross,  believes  that  "Washington  ought  to  let  us  alone,"  knows  that  very  few 
Americans  are  peasants,  and  feels  that  the  country  has  enough  inner  strength 
to  ride  out  any  kind  of  crisis.  In  several  respects  he  is  somewhat  arid;  but  no 
one  has  ever  fooled  him  twice.  He  is  a  person  of  great  power.  Because,  out  of 
the  community  itself,  power  rises  into  him.  What  he  represents  is  the  tremen- 
dous vitality  of  ordinary  American  life,  and  the  basic  good  instincts  of  the 
common  people. 

So  much  for  groups  and  types.  How  about  describing  a  series  of  events? 
[Tie  principle  is  the  same:Focus  on  one  point  that  is  so  significant  that  you 
*m  hang  your  story  onto  it.  Invariably  there  &liucE~a~po^^ 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  167 


jng  point,  the  key  event  that  explains  everything  before  and  after.  The 
^problem  is  to  find  it;  and  it  is  important,  with  events  just  as  with  people^ 
not  to  overlook  the  simple  because  of  the  more  glamorous  or  spectacular. 
Turning  points  have  a  way  of  happening  long  before  the  big  fireworks  start. 
Early  in  1945,  for  example,  when  everybody  was  talking  about  Beardsley 
Ruml  and  his  pay-as-you-go  tax  plan,  The  New  Yorker  ran  a  profile  on 
Ruml  by  Alva  Johnston.  But  the  profile  was  not  written  around  the  pay- 
as-you-go  tax.  Instead,  after  a  few  introductory  paragraphs,  the  writer 
focused  on  an  earlier  turning  point  in  Ruml's  life: 

Ruml  was  projected  into  commercial  life  by  a  quirk  in  the  mind  of  the  late 
Percy  Straus,  head  man  of  Macy's.  Unlike  most  business  men,  Straus  spent 
much  of  his  time  mixing  with  the  intelligentsia.  He  knew  that  Ruml  was  re- 
garded as  a  two-hundred-and-forty-pound  imp  and  enfant  terrible  because  of 
his  habit  of  challenging  established  ideas  and  cross-examining  everything.  "I 
want  to  get  Ruml  in  as  treasurer,"  Straus  said  to  Delos  Walker,  then  general 
manager  of  the  store.  "We  need  somebody  to  challenge  our  thinking.  We're 
in  danger  of  becoming  too  self-satisfied.  It's  good  to  be  shaken  up." 

Ruml  was  thirty-nine  at  the  time  and  had  a  distinguished  academic  berth 
—  Professor  of  Education  and  Dean  of  the  Social  Sciences  at  the  University 
of  Chicago.  He  had  no  training  to  fit  him  for  a  job  like  that  of  treasurer  of  a 
department  store.  "You'll  have  no  duties  whatever,"  said  Straus,  "except  to 
annoy  me."  This  was  an  irresistible  offer,  particularly  since  Ruml  felt  that  his 
accomplishment  in  three  years  as  dean  had  been  disappointing.  One  of  his 
colleagues  at  Chicago  said  that  Ruml  was  suffering  from  the  occupational 
disease  of  university  executives  which  was  described  by  President  Gates  of 
Pennsylvania  as  "being  pecked  to  death  by  ducks."  Mrs.  Hutchins,  wife  of  the 
president  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  was  the  author  of  Ruml's  academic 
epitaph.  "He  left  ideas  for  notions,"  she  said. 

Or  take  this  passage  from  a  Readers  Digest  article  on  Federal  Mediator 
Ching.  The  writer  goes  even  further  back  to  find  hisjocal  turning  point: 

One  day  in  1904  a  husky  young  trouble  shooter  was  trying  to  fix  a  loose 
shoe  fuse  on  a  stalled  Boston  subway  train.  As  he  leaned  over  he  slipped,  and 
a  terrible  voltage  flashed  through  his  body.  It  enveloped  him  in  blue  flame, 
blew  the  powerhouse  and  stopped  the  entire  subway  system. 

Six  days  later  the  young  man  regained  consciousness.  The  doctors  thought 
he  had  a  chance  to  live  but  would  be  permanently  blinded.  Actually,  within 
four  months  he  was  well  recovered  and  his  sight  restored. 

This  obscure  happening  more  than  40  years  ago  has  had  a  pervasive  in- 
fluence on  labor  relations  in  America.  The  young  man,  Cyrus  Stuart  Ching, 
survived  for  a  long  and  useful  career  as  an  industrial  peacemaker  and  sage, 
And  he  remembered  something.  During  the  long  weeks  of  his  convalescence 
nobody  from  the  company  management  came  to  see  him.  There  was  nc 
workmen's  compensation  in  those  days,  but  when  he  returned  to  his  job  the 
company  magnanimously  gave  him  a  new  suit  of  work  clothes.  This  treat- 
ment set  his  ruminative  mind  to  work  on  the  queer  chasm  between  the  boss 
and  the  worker.  He  has  been  thinking  about  it  ever  since. 


168  Writer 

And  now  Mr.  Ching  —  71  years  old,  but  still  carrying  his  six-foot-seven-inch 
frame  with  jaunty  vigor  —  has  taken  over  the  touchy  post  of  director  of  the 
Federal  Mediation  and  Conciliation  Service,  as  set  up  by  the  Taft-Hartley  Act. 

Proper  focusing  becomes  difficult  when  you  have  neither  a  group  of  peo- 
ple nor  a  series  of  events.  Then  what?  There  is  a  way,  but  it's  rather  hard 
-to  put  in  simple  words.  Let  me  try. 

What  you  are  after,  as  you  are  turning  your  material  over  in  your  mind, 
is  something  like  the  one-sentence  headline,  the  typical  group  member, 
the  turning  point  in  the  chain  of  events  —  some  one  thing,  that^  will  point 
up  the  significance  of  the  subjgctjis^a  whole.  Even  if  your  material  looks 
at  first  like  a  shapeless  mass  of  totally  different  items,  there  must  be  one 
point  at  which_thj6jL.jalL  converge  —  ^otherwise  you  wouldn't,  or  shouldn't, 
treat  jifim^all  together  in  one  piece  of  writing.  The  trouble  is  that  this 
Common  denominatorT^usually  so  simple  and  obvious  that  it's  practically 
invisible.T^slHelhing  you  take  so  much  for  granted  that  you  never  bother 
to  give  it  a  second  thought.  And  that's  exactly  the  trick:  find  the  under- 
lying feature  that  you  have  taken  for  granted  and  try  to  give  it  a  second 
thought. 

To  come  back,  for  instance,  to  Jack  Alexander's  Saturday  Evening  Post 
article  on  St.  Louis.  Alexander's  problem  was  this:  He  had  returned  from 
St.  Louis  with  a  heap  of  notes  but  didn't  know  how  to  pull  them  together 
into  an  understandable  whole.  After  having  spent  a  day  in  thinking,  he  hit 
upon  the  solution.  The  obvious  way  to  describe  a  city  is  to  stress  the  things 
in  which  it  is  outstanding;  but  somehow,  in  the  case  of  St.  Louis,  these 
things  were  hard  to  find.  Alexander  gave  that  a  second  thought  and  de- 
cided to  write  his  piece  around  the  theme  that  St.  Louis  made  a  virtue  of 
not  being  outstanding  in  anything.  He  wrote: 

The  spell  which  the  city  exerts  is  paradoxical  ...  St.  Louis  pursues  the 
commercial  strategy  of  limited  objectives.  It  has  no  vast  industries  ...  (Its) 
citizenry  is  simultaneously  hospitable  and  suspicious  of  the  East,  gay  and 
stubborn,  serious  about  living  and  yet  fun-loving  ...  A  booster  crude  enough 
to  preach  the  common  American  gospel  of  giantism  achieves  no  more  than  a 
dry  rattle  in  his  throat  ...  St.  Louis  has  never  fallen  for  skyscrapers  ...  St. 
Louis  might  have  grown  up  to  be  another  Chicago  or  Detroit  —  a  fate  which 
now  seems  to  St.  Louisans  to  be  worse  than  death  .  .  . 

In  this  fashion,  Alexander  wrote  a  memorable  article  by  turning  the 
underlying  theme  upside  down.  ——  ~  ---  ~~—.. 


are  aH  -sorts  of  ways  of  doing  this,  and  I  cannot  pos- 
sibly show  you  exactly  how  the  principle  applies  in  every  case.  But  I  can 
give  you  a  few  more  examples: 

Shortly  after  Hiroshima  and  Nagasaki,  there  appeared  an  unforgettable 
article  on  the  atomic  bomb.  It  was  written  by  Bob  Trout  in  the  form  of  an 
imaginary  news  broadcast  of  the  day  atomic  bombs  hit  the  United  States. 

In  1947,  Harpers  Magazine  printed  a  highly  illuminating  article  about 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples 


169 


the  British  crisis  by  the  economist  Barbara  Ward.  It  too  started  "upside 
down"  —  by  explaining  that  there  was  not  one  British  crisis  but  four:  "the 
country  has  been  struck  by  four  different  crises  simultaneously." 

Another  frequent  topic  of  magazine  articles  in  1947  was  the  community 
property  law  which  gave  married  couples  in  certain  states  the  advantage 
of  splitting  their  income  tax.  Before  Congress  incorporated  this  feature  in 
the  federal  income  tax  law,  the  subject  was  a  natural  for  popular  presenta- 
tion—  provided  the  writer  could  really  make  it  interesting.  One  writer 
(Bernard  B.  Smith  in  Harpers  Magazine)  was  highly  successful;  his  piece 
was  widely  read  and  quoted.  Let's  compare  it  with  an  example  of  the 
garden- variety  approach  (by  John  L.  McClellan  in  the  American  maga- 
zine): 


Divorce  Is  Cheaper  Than  Marriage 
by  Bernard  B.  Smith 

Only  one  marriage  in  three  these 
days  winds  up  in  the  divorce  courts, 
which  must  mean  that  two-thirds  of 
America's  husbands  think  it  is  worth 
paying  the  Collector  of  Internal  Rev- 
enue a  substantial  premium  for  the 
privilege  of  maintaining  the  institution 
of  the  family.  For  that  is  precisely 
what  they  are  doing.  The  amend- 
ments to  the  Internal  Revenue  Code 
enacted  by  the  78th  Congress  in  1942 
made  it  cheaper  for  a  man  to  get  a 
divorce  and  pay  alimony  than  to  stay 
married,  and  this  is  economically  prac- 
tical for  anybody  whose  net  taxable 
income  is  more  than  $2,000  a  year  .  .  . 


Where  You  Pay  Less  Income  Tax 
by  John  L.  McClellan 

Although  there  has  been  much  de- 
bate about  it  in  Congress,  few  persons 
realize  how  the  community-property 
law  in  a  few  lucky  states  has  perpe- 
trated a  system  of  special  privilege 
that  has  reduced  the  federal  income 
taxes  of  a  favored  minority  at  the  ex- 
pense of  a  majority. 

Most  husbands  and  wives  assume 
that  if  they  live  in  New  York,  Illinois, 
or  Wisconsin,  for  instance,  they  pay 
the  same  federal  income  tax  that  is 
paid  by  couples  with  the  same  in- 
come in  California,  Texas,  or  Okla- 
homa. They  are  wrong.  They  pay 
more.  Frequently  a  great  deal  more. 


It's  high  time  for  Congress  to  set 
this  absurdity  straight,  and  make  the 
institution  of  marriage  as  attractive 
financially  as  the  institution  of  divorce. 


It  is  the  duty  of  the  Federal  Gov- 
ernment to  provide  an  equitable  sys- 
tem of  income  taxes,  and  it  is  the  re- 
sponsibility of  the  Congress  to  amend 
present  law,  so  as  to  remove  this  in- 
justice and  provide  equality  under  the 
law  to  all  citizens  alike,  irrespective  of 
their  state  domicile. 


There  can  hardly  be  any  question  that  Smith's  upside-down  treatment  of 
the  subject  is  more  effective  than  McClellan's  conventional  approach.  Mind 
you,  I  am  not  saying  that  the  McClellan  article  is  bad:  it's  a  good,  crafts- 
manlike  popular-magazine  piece.  But  the  divorce-is^-cheaper-thaii-jnarriage 
ideajs  the_jjpd  nf  t*"ng  *kflt  sticks  in  the  mind;  it's  that  extra  something 
by  which  we  remember  what  we  have  read. 


Notes  for  a  Portrait  of 

Dummy  Flagg     &•  Student  Paper 


Here  are  several  pages  of  preliminary  notes  made  by  a  student 
getting  ready  to  write  a  sketch  of  an  old  deaf  and  dumb  man  he  re- 
membered from  childhood.  The  author  is  thinking  on  paper,  jotting 
down  items  as  they  occur  to  him,  in  no  particular  order  at  first,  then 
searching  for  some  principle  of  organization.  Notice  the  different  kinds 
of  items  and  the  ways  in  which  the  author  shifts  and  combines  them. 
The  last  page  is  the  beginning  of  his  first  draft. 

First  page 

Frank  Flagg  —  Dummy  always  called 

his  smell 

cats 

fish  bones  in  his  bed 

his  trunk 

his  yah-yah-yah 

his  runny,  red  eye 

sagging  mouth  corner 

shooting  medals,  frequent  trips 

shot  over  his  shoulder,  looking  in  mirror 

slit  around  finger,  looking  at  Ruth 

made  me  a  beautiful  jack  o'  lantern,  cow  jumping  over  moon  — 

I  hated  it,  wanted  a  face  like  the  others  had  —  mother  scolded 

didn't  stay  to  get  moved  with  the  others  to  the  new  poorhouse 

would  go  out  to  greet  people  on  Sunday 

saw  him  downtown  once 

greasy  strings 

his  writing  on  the  wall  —  Tie  has  gone  down  to  the  schoolhouse 

with  his  mother" 
writing  in  odd  spots 

holding  hand  at  different  heights  to  mean  different  people 
own  chair  and  table 

pimples  on  Henry's  pasty  face  —  pie  crust 
molasses  candy  made  me  sick  —  tobacco  in  it 
we  threw  apples  at  him  by  the  old  car  —  shook  his  stick  — 

yah-yah 
feared  but  I  used  to  go  over  there 

170 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  171 

Second  page 

Physical  appearance: 

smell  —  harness,  tobacco,  leather  smell 

runny  red  eyes 

sagging  mouth 

greasy  clothes  —  wouldn't  wrinkle,  so  greasy 

his  yah-yah-yah 

Habits: 

shoemaker's  wooden  bench  with  wooden  vise 
Sunday  front  yard 
his  cats,  sleek 
trips  away 

writing  —  schoolhouse 
designating  heights 
own  chair  and  table 
medals 
trunk 
dirty  adhesive  on  finger 

Episodes: 

slit  around  finger  at  Ruth 

pelted  with  apples    P 

Jack  o'  lantern    P 

cats  in  trunk    PR? 

fish  from  shed  chamber  &  bones  in  bed     R 

dolls  shoes  for  me    P 

get  out  when  poor  moved    P 
showed  up  one  day,  me  alone,  sword,  old  Pew    R 
molasses  candy  —  sick    P 

P  — pity 

R  —  repulsion 

pull  down  mouth  &  eyes  &  mock 
effect  of  looking  at  his  eyes 
drooling 
unhealthy 

Third  page 

OBJECT:  to  produce  a  picture 

to  set  up  emotional  reaction 

Disgust  —  repulsion 

pity  —  understanding  —  sickness 

should  I  move  him  to  one  place  to  focus  on  him  as  impression  to  leave? 
set  a  rhythm  before  begin 


172  Writer 

avoid  subjective  statements 

One  picture  desired  to  leave  strongly 

sharp  sense  of  him 

repeat  "greasy"  —  clothes,  fish  in  bed,  when  he  returns  last  time, 

greasy  pencil  stub  that  he  would  lap  before  writing 

his  wax 

ooze,  oil,  was,  always 

I  don't  know  why  he  tried  to  talk;  perhaps  he  didn't  know  he  was  mak- 
ing a  noise. 

Narrative  not  purposive  of  Dummy  would  give  effect  of  how  cruel  I 
was  — 

Pretending  to  ignore  Dummy  —  have  him  merely  incidental? 

Fourth  page 

I  Explain  —  introductory 

II  Narration  with  interspersed  habits 

(against  his  background  his  habits) 
slit  finger  at  Ruth  didn't  get  along 

jabber  own  table,  chair 

repulsive  laugh  cats,  fish  in  bed 

apples,  molasses  candy,  jack  o'  lantern,  finger  &  circle,  me  alone 

III  Some  time  after,  I  heard  he  was  dead.  They  all  died  — 

Fifth  page 

His  lips  were  always  moist  and  sagged  at  one  corner. 

His  mouth  sagged  at  one  corner  and  was  always  loose  and  moist. 

gazed,  stared,  watched,  looked 

One  day  in  the  barn  Dummy 

I  had  a  tent  down  in  the  woods  where  my  sister  and  I  and  the  others 

used  to  play. 

In  the  big  downstairs  room  he  had  his  own  chair  and  his  own  table 

where  he  always  ate  by  himself.    Over  in  the  corner  by  the  cupboard. 

There  was  always  a  big  pile  of  whittlings  (shavings)  in  the  corner  behind 

his  chair. 

Sixth  page 

When  my  father  kept  the  city  poor-farm  there  were  always  five  or  ten 
old  men  living  in  the  poorhouse  behind  us.  Dummy  Flagg  was  one  of 
them.  He  was  deaf  and  dumb  and  greasy.  His  mouth  sagged  at  one 
corner  and  was  loose  and  always  moist,  and  his  eyes  watered.  When  he 
tried  to  talk  he  made  a  noise  in  his  throat,  like  a  dog  trying  to  talk.  He 
smelled  like  an  old  harness  chest  and  tobacco  and  stale  grease.  A  lot  of 
people  felt  afraid  of  him,  and  so  did  I,  but  not  so  much  as  the  other  chil- 
dren who  came  to  play  with  me. 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  173 

One  day  when  he  had  first  come,  my  sister  and  another  little  girl 
named  Ruth,  and  I,  were  in  the  milk-room  while  he  was  trying  to  tell 
one  of  the  hired  men  something,  with  his  hands  and  fingers  twisting 
into  all  sorts  of  strange  shapes.  Sometimes  he  would  write  on  the  wall 
with  a  little  green  pencil  stub  that  he  would  lick  before  he  began  to 
write.  This  time  he  only  used  his  hands.  He  pointed  across  his  shoulder 
down  at  the  woods  and  then  up  the  road,  and  held  out  his  palm  low  — 
that  meant  the  little  girl  who  lived  up  the  road,  Ruth.  We  watched,  not 
understanding.  He  held  up  a  finger,  carefully  drew  his  jackknife  blade 
around  the  end  of  it,  looked  toward  us  there,  and  laughed  his  noise  like 
a  dog  trying  to  laugh.  He  brushed  the  water  from  his  eyes  and  wiped 
his  hands  on  the  front  of  his  coat.  The  hired  man  laughed  too,  and 
looked  at  us. 

"What  does  he  mean  by  that?"  I  asked  the  hired  man. 

He  laughed  again.  "He  says  he's  going  to  cut  Ruth's  head  off  down 
in  the  pine  woods!"  The  hired  man's  face  had  a  lot  of  pimples  and  was 
the  color  of  the  top  of  a  pie.  His  name  was  Henry,  and  I  hated  them 
both,  suddenly. 

Ruth  ran  home  crying.  Henry  said  Dummy  was  only  joking,  but 
Ruth  did  not  come  again  to  play  with  us  for  a  long  time.  .  .  . 


Revising  a  Theme 

Richard  C.  Ittakeslee  •  i92i- 


Perhaps  the  least  welcome  lesson  for  a  beginning  writer  to  learn 
is  the  value  and  the  necessity  of  rewriting.  When  we  read  the  finished 
pieces  of  professional  writers,  we  are  likely  to  suppose  they  wrote  them 
right  off,  j'ust  as  they  stand;  but  this  is  not  so.  Most  good  writing  is 
the  result  of  careful  rewriting;  the  first  draft  is  only  the  beginning  of  a 
finished  /ob,  and  some  professional  writers  carry  revising  on  and  on, 
changing  and  improving  a  piece  each  time  they  republish  it.  The  fol- 
lowing article  may  be  more  useful  to  you  than  an  example  of  a  pro- 
fessional writer's  revisions.  It  was  written  not  for  students  but  for  the 
instructors  in  a  freshman  composition  course,  to  give  them  some  advice 
about  dealing  with  freshman  papers. 

THE  INSTRUCTOR'S  comments  on  a  paper  are  designed  to  help  the  student 
improve  his  writing,  not  to  show  the  instructor's  firm  grasp  of  correction 
symbols.  It  is  admittedly  difficult  not  to  lash  out  at  each  mistake,  but  a 

Reprinted  by  permission  of  Richard  C.  Blakeslee,  Northwestern  University. 


174  Writer 

paper  with  every  error  marked  is  usually  more  terrifying  than  helpful. 
After  thumbing  dutifully  through  his  handbook  for  five  or  six  assorted 
errors  in  the  first  paragraph,  the  student  is  very  likely  to  lose  all  perspec- 
tive as  to  what  is  wrong  with  the  paper  as  a  whole  —  and  consequently 
have  no  idea  how  to  improve  it. 

One  solution  is  for  the  instructor  to  read  each  paper  through  com- 
pletely before  making  any  comments  or  marks.  Then  he  can  decide  what 
are  the  errors  (or  types  of  errors)  that  are  causing  the  damage,  that  need 
stressing.  These  can  then  be  dealt  with  quite  fully,  with  positive  sugges- 
tions for  improvement.  This  technique  is  particularly  effective  in  marking 
papers  which  are  to  be  revised.  Instead  of  scattering  his  thinking  in  all 
directions,  the  student  is  led  by  the  instructor's  comments  to  concentrate 
on  one  or  two  particular  weaknesses  in  his  writing. 

Here  is  a  student  paper  written  in  class  early  in  the  first  quarter  on  the 
admittedly  vague  assignment,  "Describe  an  incident  from  your  personal 
experience  which  you  consider  to  be  of  general  interest  and  which  is 
limited  enough  to  cover  in  two  or  three  hundred  words." 

Late  in  October  last  year  I  spent  an  eventful  day  at  Hawk  Moun- 
tain that  I  will  always  remember.  Hawk  Mountain  is  a  recent  bird 
sanctuary  which  was  formerly  a  place  for  gunners  to  develop  their 
skill  in  shooting.  Each  Fall  thousands  of  hawks  as  well  as  other 
birds  pass  by  this  mountain  in  Pennsylvania  creating  an  unforget- 
table spectacle. 

I  had  heard  about  Hawk  Mountain  from  a  friend  who  was  im- 
pressed by  a  book  he  had  read  about  it.  We  got  together  last  Fall 
and  made  plans  to  visit  this  sanctuary. 

We  arrived  at  the  sanctuary  a  little  before  noon  on  October 

fin- 
twenty-third.    It  was  a  bitter  cold  day  and  although  the  sun  was 

out  and  the  sky  was  clear,  the  wind  was  raw.  We  sat  hunched  up 
against  a  twisted  tree  all  that  afternoon  and  until  early  in  the 

^0*2/-tf?2/  >&*2x5*tC£/ 

evening  we  were  slightly  disappointed  for  we  had  not  seen  even  one 
bird  of  prey  that  afternoon.  Then  about  five-thirty  a  group  of 
rcdtailed  Hawks  passed  so  close  to  our  ridge  that  I  felt  I  could 
reach  out  and  touch  some  of  the  birds.  We  made  a  try  in  estimating 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  175 

the  number  but  they  were  at  all  altitudes  which  made  an  even 
fairly  accurate  estimate  impossible.  We  won't  forget  that  spectacle 
for  some  time. 

COMMENT  TO  STUDENT 

You  have  selected  an  incident  which  might  be  very  interesting,  but  you 
don't  leave  yourself  any  room  really  to  describe  it  and  get  it  across  to  the 
audience.  Despite  the  fact  that  the  core  of  the  paper  is  the  flight  of  the 
hawks,  you  have  only  two  sentences  on  that  flight.  In  fact,  you  don't  even 
arrive  at  the  sanctuary  until  the  third  paragraph. 

Your  sentence  about  "estimating  the  number"  is  too  statistical  to  be 
vivid;  try  to  make  the  reader  visualize  or  "feel"  the  hawks.  The  sentence 
about  touching  them  is  a  little  standard,  but  it  is  still  more  effective  than 
talking  about  an  "accurate  estimate."  Speaking  of  being  standard  (trite), 
how  about  "bitter  cold,"  "wind  was  raw."  Three  "never  forgets"  are  too 
many  for  such  a  short  theme. 

COMMENT  TO  TEACHERS 

The  comment  on  this  paper  would  be  the  same  if  the  paper  were  far 
worse  mechanically  than  it  is.  The  big  problem  here  is  the  lack  of  stress 
on  the  main  point,  which  means  that  much  of  the  revision  will  consist  of 
new  material.  Correcting  minor  errors  will  distract  the  student  from  his 
main  job  of  getting  across  the  flight  of  the  hawks,  and  correcting  sentences 
which  will  then  have  to  be  scrapped  may  well  seem  to  him  a  rather  point- 
less business. 

The  errors  in  the  punctuation  of  sentences  seem  related  and  fairly  seri- 
ous. His  corrections  should  be  followed  up  by  watching  for  this  sort  of 
trouble  in  the  revision.  The  other  comments  are  based  on  the  theory  that 
the  most  valuable  kind  of  correction  is  forward  looking,  forcing  the  stu- 
dent to  think  constructively  about  a  new  piece  of  writing  rather  than 
merely  to  dissect  last  week's  theme. 

This  was  an  actual  paper.  The  revision  got  the  boys  onto  the  mountain 
in  two  sentences  and  did,  in  the  main,  a  good  job  of  focusing  on  the  hawks 
themselves.  Here  is  the  hawk  section: 

We  spent  all  the  afternoon  hunched  up  against  a  twisted  tree  with- 
out seeing-  even  one  bird  of  prey.  Then  about  five-thirty  a  trio  of 
soaring  redtailed  hawks  passed  over  us  at  a  high  altitude.  Then 
even  before  the  trio  had  passed  from  sight  the  show  had  begun.  A 
single  hawk  flashed  by  so  suddenly  and  low  that  it  sent  the  photog- 
raphers scrambling  to  get  in  a  shot.  But  their  opportunity  was  just 
beginning.  A  group  of  hawks  passed  so  close  to  our  ridge  that  I 


176  Writer 

felt  I  could  reach  out  and  touch  some  of  them.  Our  view  was  limited 
by  the  jagged  peaks  at  each  end  of  the  ridge  so  it  seemed  as  if  an 
endless  stream  of  birds  passed  before  us  before  the  main  body  of 
the  migrating  hawks  had  passed.  Even  by  dusk  a  few  hawks  were 
still  sailing  by. 

One  point  of  interest,  in  addition  to  the  great  improvement  in  detail,  is 
the  fact  that  the  error  "redtailed  Hawks,"  which  appeared  in  the  first 
version  but  was  not  marked,  was  corrected  by  the  student  on  his  own. 
This  is  a  frequent  result  when  the  student  is  warned  that  no  attempt  has 
been  made  to  mark  every  mistake  and  that  he  himself  must  take  an  active 
part  in  the  improvement  of  his  writing. 

At  this  point,  with  the  theme  beginning  to  assume  some  shape,  the  in- 
structor should  point  out  how  the  student  can  improve  his  effect  by  the 
revision  of  certain  sentences,  etc.  For  example,  the  details  in  the  next  to 
last  sentence  are  really  fine.  The  student  should  be  told  this  and  then 
shown  how  several  awkward  repetitions  mar  the  effect  of  his  good  think- 
ing. 


Thoughts  on  Composition    & 

Henry  David  J^boreau  •  i8i7-i862 


One  of  the  most  useful  strategies  writers  have  discovered  is  to 
keep  a  notebook  or  journal  of  their  ideas,  observations,  and  experiences, 
as  a  quarry  for  future  writings.  The  notebooks  of  many  writers  have 
been  published,  as  books  in  their  own  right.  Among  these  are  Thoreau's 
Journals  from  which  he  quarried  the  materials  for  Walden  (1854),  the 
classic  account  of  his  experiment  in  simplified  living  and  high  think- 
ing. There  are  many  passages  on  writing,  among  which  the  following 
selections  offer  usable  suggestions. 

[THE  VALUE  OF  KEEPING  A  JOURNAL]:  To  set  down  such  choice  experiences 
that  my  own  writings  may  inspire  me  and  at  last  I  may  make  wholes  of 
parts.  Certainly  it  is  a  distinct  profession  to  rescue  from  oblivion  and  to 
fix  the  sentiments  and  thoughts  which  visit  all  men  more  or  less  generally, 
that  the  contemplation  of  the  unfinished  picture  may  suggest  its  harmoni- 
ous completion.  Associate  reverently  and  as  much  as  you  can  with  your 
loftiest  thoughts.  Each  thought  that  is  welcomed  and  recorded  is  a  nest 
egg,  by  the  side  of  which  more  will  be  laid.  Thoughts  accidentally  thrown 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  177 

together  become  a  frame  in  which  more  may  be  developed  and  exhibited. 
Perhaps  this  is  the  main  value  of  a  habit  of  writing,  or  keeping  a  journal,  — 
that  so  we  remember  our  best  hours  and  stimulate  ourselves.  My  thoughts 
are  my  company.  They  have  a  certain  individuality  and  separate  existence, 
aye,  personality.  Having  by  chance  recorded  a  few  disconnected  thoughts 
and  then  brought  them  into  juxtaposition,  they  suggest  a  whole  new  field 
in  which  it  was  possible  to  labor  and  to  think.  Thought  begat  thought. 

—  Journal,  22  January  1852 

.  .  .  The  one  great  rule  of  composition  —  and  if  I  were  a  professor  of 
rhetoric  I  should  insist  on  this  —  is  to  speak  the  truth.  This  first,  this  sec- 
ond, this  third.  This  demands  earnestness  and  manhood  chiefly. 

—  Journal,  6  December  1859 

.  .  .  The  forcible  writer  stands  bodily  behind  his  words  with  his  experi- 
ence. He  does  not  make  books  out  of  books,  but  he  has  been  there  in 
person. 

—  Journal,  3  February  1852 

.  .  .  Whatever  wit  has  been  produced  on  the  spur  of  the  moment  will 
bear  to  be  reconsidered  and  reformed  with  phlegm.1  The  arrow  had  best 
not  be  loosely  shot.  The  most  transient  and  passing  remark  must  be  re- 
considered by  the  writer,  made  sure  and  warranted,  as  if  the  earth  had 
rested  on  its  axle  to  back  it,  and  all  the  natural  forces  lay  behind  it.  The 
writer  must  direct  his  sentences  as  carefully  and  leisurely  as  the  marksman 
his  rifle,  who  shoots  sitting  and  with  a  rest  with  patent  sights  and  conical 
balls  beside.  He  must  not  merely  seem  to  speak  the  truth.  He  must  really 
speak  it.  If  you  foresee  that  a  part  of  your  essay  will  topple  down  after  the 
lapse  of  time,  throw  it  down  now  yourself. 

—  Journal,  26  January  1852 

...  I  wish  that  I  could  buy  at  the  shops  some  kind  of  india-rubber  that 
would  rub  out  at  once  all  that  in  my  writing  which  it  now  costs  me  so 
many  perusals,  so  many  months  if  not  years,  and  so  much  reluctance,  to 
erase. 

—  Journal,  27  December  1853 

...  In  correcting  my  manuscripts,  which  I  do  with  sufficient  phlegm,  I 
find  that  I  invariably  turn  out  much  that  is  good  along  with  the  bad, 
which  it  is  then  impossible  for  me  to  distinguish  —  so  much  for  keeping 
bad  company;  but  after  the  lapse  of  time,  having  purified  the  main  body 
and  thus  created  a  distinct  standard  for  comparison,  I  can  review  the 
rejected  sentences  and  easily  detect  those  which  deserve  to  be  readmitted. 

—  Journal,  1  March  1854 

1  Phlegm:  calmness. 


178  Writer 

...  If  you  are  describing  any  occurrence,  or  a  man,  make  two  or  more 
distinct  reports  at  different  times.  Though  you  may  think  you  have  said 
all,  you  will  to-morrow  remember  a  whole  new  class  of  facts  which  per- 
haps interested  most  of  all  at  the  time,  but  did  not  present  themselves 
to  be  reported.  If  we  have  recently  met  and  talked  with  a  man,  and 
would  report  our  experience,  we  commonly  make  a  very  partial  report 
at  first,  failing  to  seize  the  most  significant,  picturesque,  and  dramatic 
points;  we  describe  only  what  we  have  had  time  to  digest  and  dispose 
of  in  our  minds,  without  being  conscious  that  there  were  other  things 
really  more  novel  and  interesting  to  us,  which  will  not  fail  to  recur  to 
us  and  impress  us  suitably  at  last.  How  little  that  occurs  to  us  in  any 
way  are  we  prepared  at  once  to  appreciate!  We  discriminate  at  first 
only  a  few  features,  and  we  need  to  reconsider  our  experience  from 
many  points  of  view  and  in  various  moods,  to  preserve  the  whole  fruit 
of  it. 

—  Journal,  24  March  1857 

...  I  would  fain  make  two  reports  in  my  Journal,  first  the  incidents  and 
observations  of  to-day;  and  by  to-morrow  I  review  the  same  and  record 
what  was  omitted  before,  which  will  often  be  the  most  significant  and 
poetic  part.  I  do  not  know  at  first  what  it  is  that  charms  me.  The  men 
and  things  of  to-day  are  wont  to  lie  fairer  and  truer  in  to-morrow's 
memory. 

—  Journal,  27  March  1857 


Talk 

John  Holmes  •  i904~ 

About  the  origin  of  this  poem  and  the  way  its  unifying  idea  came 
to  him,  Mr.  Holmes  wrote: 

"The  long  piece,  'Talk/  is  a  memory  of  E.  W.  Ottie,  who  did  make 
beautiful  ship-models,  and  was  deaf  because  he  had  two  cauliflower  ears 
from  wrestling.  He  had  enough  small  tools  and  power-machinery  to 
have  launched  a  navy,  and  I  used  to  hang  around  his  shop,  in  what  had 
been  a  Universalist  church,  because  my  father's  cousin  had  some  sort 
of  part  interest  there;  maybe  he  paid  some  of  the  rent.  Mr.  Ottie  has 
long  since  disappeared  from  view,  and  my  father's  cousin  is  dead;  most 
of  the  other  facts  are  in  the  poem.  But  at  first  I  wrote  an  outpouring 
memory  of  a  time  and  place  I  had  not  thought  of  for  years;  when  I 

Reprinted  from  Map  of  My  Country  (New  York:   Dueil,  Sloan  &  Pearce,  1943). 
Copyright  by  John  Holmes. 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  179 

had  written  myself  out,  it  meant  nothing,  it  was  a  sort  of  self-in- 
dulgence. But  there  was  something.  I  have  always  lilced  plans,  build- 
ing, tools,  the  accuracy  and  Tightness  of  machine-shop  work,  and  car- 
pentry, and  models  of  anything.  Suddenly,  by  rearranging  the  order  of 
my  merely  reminiscent  lines,  I  knew  that  I  had  learned  in  his  shop  the 
inviolable  rules  and  the  unspeakable  mystery  of  good  craftsmanship.  I 
didn't  know  it  then.  But  I  used  the  strange  paradox  of  his  deafness 
and  our  unthinking  communication;  and  I  had  a  picture  in  my  mind 
of  the  East  Indiaman.  I  did  some  research  in  a  friend's  library,  and  at 
a  naval  museum,  to  be  sure;  the  East  Indiaman  was  big  and  heavy,  for 
certain  historical  and  economic  reasons,  and  was  soon  superseded  by 
smaller,  faster,  and  more  profitable  ships.  But  that  was  merely  the 
checking  of  a  fact.  The  boy's  impression  remained  true,  and  it  was 
good  talk." 

SOME  of  the  best  talk  I  ever  had 

Was  with  a  deaf  old  near-sighted  wrestler  who  had  been  to  sea, 

And  made  ship-models  for  a  living,  and  didn't  say  much. 

I  was  a  small  boy,  I  stared.    I  hung  around  his  shop  after  school. 

He  was  very  deaf,  and  it  made  a  good  silence  for  me  to  think  in. 
He  spoke  once  or  twice  in  an  hour.   He  whittled  out  whaleboats,  peering. 
"Good,"  he  would  say,  with  a  sharp  knife  and  the  wood  near  his  nose. 
When  he  held  it  to  the  window,  I  could  see  light  through  the  boat's  bows. 
"Damn,"  he'd  say,  if  he  dropped  his  knife,  no  tone,  a  deaf  "Damn." 

I'd  be  learning  the  shapes  of  ships  from  big  slippery  magazines, 

Or  I'd  be  turning  crinkly  blueprints  and  deck-plans,  unrolling  the  rolls, 

Using  his  tack-hammers  and  wood-scraps  to  make  them  lie  flat. 

Oh,  and  there  once  I  saw 

Alone  with  him  one  dim  afternoon 

The  strict  thin  purposeful  lines 

On  the  flat  plan,  soar,  live,  sail, 

Deck  above  deck,  mast  over  deck,  flag 

Topping  mast,  and  knew  what  he  knew  while  he  whittled. 

What  he  said,  he  said  with  his  hundreds  of  tools,  sharp,  meaningful, 

Red-handled,  a  blade  for  every  cut,  a  drill-size  for  everything. 

He  talked,  I  mean  I  knew  what  he  was  saying, 

When  he  pushed  the  white  pine  planks  into  the  power-saw 

To  cut  out  the  rough  curved  layers  he  built  up  into  hulls, 

Then  planed,  whittled,  sand-papered,  rubbed  with  stub  fingers  into  ships 

Then  he  painted  them  green  under  the  waterline,  or  bronze; 

Then  he  rigged  them,  he  sewed  sails  for  them  finer  than  a  handkerchief. 


180  Writer 

He  could  paint  pictures,  too, 

Another  way  of  talking;  ships  of  the  line,  water-colors  in  red  and  blue, 

Tacked  on  the  shop  walls  above  rubbish  and  bright  tools  and  lumber. 

He  cast  his  own  anchors,  cannon,  blocks;  I  fingered  the  moulds; 

I  breathed  smells  he  made  of  hot  metal,  of  oil,  glue,  sawdust,  turpentine, 

I  smelled  the  color  of  the  paint,  I  heard  the  shavings  curl,  a  way  of  listening. 

My  pulse  was  the  beat  of  the  idle  belts  on  the  shafting,  a  way  of  talking. 

I  made  believe  I  walked  the  decks,  hung  in  the  main-tops,  rode 

The  piling  swell  of  the  green  seas  in  the  bowsprit  chains. 

I  stared  up  from  the  afterdeck  at  the  huge  flowing  balance,  the  color, 

The  riding  cloud  above  me  of  sails,  flags,  rigging,  masts,  and  sky. 

"What  are  you  doing  now?"  he  would  say,  and  I  did  not  answer. 

I've  seen  his  ships  sailing  in  glass  cases  in  the  great  museums. 
I  still  make  believe.   I  still  stare.   I'm  there 

On  the  small  perfect  decks  perfectly  empty;  up  out  of  the  crew's  hatch- 
way 

I  climb  to  take  my  turn  at  the  night-watch  in  the  bow. 
He's  there,  too.   That's  why  he  built  them,  I  think  now. 
It's  a  special  thing,  building  them,  collecting  them,  making  believe. 
But  I  understand  why  it's  good.    He  told  me. 
I  wouldn't  have  known  that  you  throw  work  away 
When  you  spoil  it  half-done.   I  guessed  that  he  guessed 
Like  a  cook  with  a  cookbook  sometimes,  one  look  at  the  blueprints 
And  three  at  the  wood.   I  wouldn't  have  known  that. 
I  wouldn't  have  known  that  however  you  build  it, 
The  ship  must  sail;  you  can't  explain  to  the  ocean. 
But  the  pure  grain  of  the  wood  achieving  shape  under  tools, 
The  masts  long  like  flower-stems,  the  spars  tapered, 
The  blunt  round  of  the  bows  of  the  finger-length  whale-boats, 
Smooth-dusty  from  sandpapering,  no  paint  yet,  the  wood  — 
That  was  the  best  talk. 

I  remember  the  words  of  the  wood,  and  his  grimed  quick  fingers 
Telling  truth  with  a  knife,  reaching  for  the  other  tools, 
Knowing  his  need,  and  the  grain  of  the  wood  knowing. 
Have  you  seen  the  most  beautiful  of  all  ships? 
Not  the  clipper,  the  whaler,  the  yacht,  the  gray  battle-cruiser, 
It  isn't  the  galley  with  banked  oars,  or  the  shouldering  galleon. 
It's  the  East  Indiaman,  four  decks,  and  flaring  with  flags, 
All  the  rails  mahogany,  the  figurehead  carven  and  colored,  plunging, 
The  captain's  gallery  all  windows  at  the  great  stern, 
And  the  mountains  of  sail,  the  enormous  lift  of  the  long  decks. 
A  castle,  a  country  sailing,  so  proud,  so  golden  and  slow  and  proud. 

He  was  an  old  man  when  I  knew  him,  deaf  and  bad  eyes. 
He  wore  a  gray  sweater,  and  a  very  old  cap,  always. 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  181 

"What  have  you  been  doing,  John?"  he  would  say,  every  day. 

And  I  would  say  nothing.   He  couldn't  hear. 

"Do  you  know  what  this  is  I  am  making?" 

I  knew  what  he  was  making,  even  before  it  seemed  to  be. 

I  could  hear.   I  could  make  believe.   I  could  see. 

He  always  had  half  a  dozen  ships  on  the  bench,  thinking  them  into  shape. 

He  hummed,  whittled,  peered,  swore,  studied  blueprints. 

It  was  some  of  the  best  talk  I  ever  had. 

4.  GIVING  THE  FACTS 

The  Language  of  Reports    «* 

S.  1.  Jiayakawa  •  4906- 


The  distinctions  Hayakawa  draws  in  this  essay  between  facts, 
inferences,  and  judgments  can  be  very  useful.  They  will  help  you  in- 
terpret what  others  say  or  write  and  will  make  you  more  aware  of  the 
actual  nature  of  your  own  statements.  The  best  way  to  find  out  whether 
you  grasp  the  distinctions  would  be  to  try  to  carry  out  his  suggested 
exercise  of  writing  a  purely  factual  report.  Can  you  manage  to  exclude 
all  inferences  and  judgments? 

FOR  THE  PURPOSES  of  the  interchange  of  information,  the  basic  symbolic 
act  is  the  report  of  what  we  have  seen,  heard,  or  felt:  "There  is  a  ditch 
on  each  side  of  the  road."  "You  can  get  those  at  Smith's  hardware  store 
for  $2.75."  "There  aren't  any  fish  on  that  side  of  the  lake,  but  there  are 
on  this  side."  Then  there  are  reports  of  reports:  "The  longest  waterfall 
in  the  world  is  Victoria  Falls  in  Rhodesia."  "The  Battle  of  Hastings  took 
place  in  1066."  "The  papers  say  that  there  was  a  big  smash-up  on  High- 
way 41  near  Evansville."  Reports  adhere  to  the  following  rules:  first, 
they  are  capable  of  verification;  second,  they  exclude,  as  far  as  possible, 
inferences  and  judgments.  (These  terms  will  be  defined  later.) 

VERIFIABILITY 

Reports  are  verifiable.  We  may  not  always  be  able  to  verify  them  our- 
selves, since  we  cannot  track  down  the  evidence  for  every  piece  of  history 

From  Language  in  Thought  and  Action,  by  S.  I.  Hayakawa.  Copyright,  1941,  1949,  by 
Harcourt,  Brace  and  Company,  Inc.,  pp.  38-44. 


182  Writer 

we  know,  nor  can  we  all  go  to  Evansville  to  see  the  remains  of  the  smash- 
up  before  they  are  cleared  away.  But  if  we  are  roughly  agreed  on  the 
names  of  things,  on  what  constitutes  a  "foot,"  "yard,"  "bushel,"  and  so  on, 
and  on  how  to  measure  time,  there  is  relatively  little  danger  of  our  mis- 
understanding each  other.  Even  in  a  world  such  as  we  have  today,  in 
which  everybody  seems  to  be  quarreling  with  everybody  else,  we  still 
to  a  surprising  degree  trust  each  others  reports.  We  ask  directions  of 
total  strangers  when  we  are  traveling.  We  follow  directions  on  road  signs 
without  being  suspicious  of  the  people  who  put  them  up.  We  read  books 
of  information  about  science,  mathematics,  automotive  engineering,  travel, 
geography,  the  history  of  costume,  and  other  such  factual  matters,  and 
we  usually  assume  that  the  author  is  doing  his  best  to  tell  us  as  truly  as 
he  can  what  he  knows.  And  we  are  safe  in  so  assuming  most  of  the  time. 
With  the  emphasis  that  is  being  given  today  to  the  discussion  of  biased 
newspapers,  propagandists,  and  the  general  untrustworthiness  of  many 
of  the  communications  we  receive,  we  are  likely  to  forget  that  we  still 
have  an  enormous  amount  of  reliable  information  available  and  that 
deliberate  misinformation,  except  in  warfare,  still  is  more  the  exception 
than  the  rule.  The  desire  for  self-preservation  that  compelled  men  to 
evolve  means  for  the  exchange  of  information  also  compels  them  to  regard 
the  giving  of  false  information  as  profoundly  reprehensible. 

At  its  highest  development,  the  language  of  reports  is  the  language  of 
science.  By  "highest  development"  we  mean  greatest  general  usefulness, 
Presbyterian  and  Catholic,  workingman  and  capitalist,  German  and  Eng- 
lishman, agree  on  the  meanings  of  such  symbols  as  2  X  2  =  4,  100°C., 
HNOs,  3:35  A.M.,  1940  A.D.,  5000  r.p.m.,  1000  kilowatts,  pulex  irritans,  and 
so  on.  But  how,  it  may  be  asked,  can  there  be  agreement  about  even 
this  much  among  people  who  are  at  each  other's  throats  about  practically 
everything  else:  political  philosophies,  ethical  ideals,  religious  beliefs,  and 
the  survival  of  my  business  versus  the  survival  of  yours?  The  answer  is 
that  circumstances  compel  men  to  agree,  whether  they  wish  to  or  not.  If, 
for  example,  there  were  a  dozen  different  religious  sects  in  the  United 
States,  each  insisting  on  its  own  way  of  naming  the  time  of  the  day  and 
the  days  of  the  year,  the  mere  necessity  of  having  a  dozen  different  calen- 
dars, a  dozen  different  kinds  of  watches,  and  a  dozen  sets  of  schedules  for 
business  hours,  trains,  and  radio  programs,  to  say  nothing  of  the  effort 
that  would  be  required  for  translating  terms  from  one  nomenclature  to 
another,  would  make  life  as  we  know  it  impossible. 

The  language  of  reports,  then,  including  the  more  accurate  reports  of 
science,  is  "map"  language,  and  because  it  gives  us  reasonably  accurate 
representations  of  the  "territory,"  it  enables  us  to  get  work  done.  Such 
language  may  often  be  what  is  commonly  termed  "dull"  or  "uninteresting" 
reading:  one  does  not  usually  read  logarithmic  tables  or  telephone  direc- 
tories for  entertainment.  But  we  could  not  get  along  without  it.  There 
are  numberless  occasions  in  the  talking  and  writing  we  do  in  everyday 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  183 

life  that  require  that  we  state  things  in  such  a  way  that  everybody  will 
agree  with  our  formulation. 

INFERENCES 

The  reader  will  find  that  practice  in  writing  reports  is  a  quick  means  of 
increasing  his  linguistic  awareness.  It  is  an  exercise  which  will  constantly 
provide  him  with  his  own  examples  of  the  principles  of  language  and 
interpretation  under  discussion.  The  reports  should  be  about  first-hand 
experience  —  scenes  the  reader  has  witnessed  himself,  meetings  and  social 
events  he  has  taken  part  in,  people  he  knows  well.  They  should  be  of 
such  a  nature  that  they  can  be  verified  and  agreed  upon.  For  the  purpose 
of  this  exercise,  inferences  will  be  excluded. 

Not  that  inferences  are  not  important  —  we  rely  in  everyday  life  and 
in  science  as  much  on  inferences  as  on  reports  —  in  some  areas  of  thought, 
for  example,  geology,  paleontology,  and  nuclear  physics,  reports  are  the 
foundations,  but  inferences  (and  inferences  upon  inferences)  are  the  main 
body  of  the  science.  An  inference,  as  we  shall  use  the  term,  is  a  statement 
about  the  unknown  made  on  the  basis  of  the  known.  We  may  infer  from 
the  handsomeness  of  a  woman's  clothes  her  wealth  or  social  position;  we 
may  infer  from  the  character  of  the  ruins  the  origin  of  the  fire  that  de- 
stroyed the  building;  we  may  infer  from  a  man's  calloused  hands  the 
nature  of  his  occupation;  we  may  infer  from  a  senator's  vote  on  an  arma- 
ments bill  his  attitude  toward  Russia;  we  may  infer  from  the  structure  of 
the  land  the  path  of  a  prehistoric  glacier;  we  may  infer  from  a  halo  on  an 
unexposed  photographic  plate  that  it  has  been  in  the  vicinity  of  radioactive 
materials;  we  may  infer  from  the  noise  an  engine  makes  the  condition  of 
its  connecting  rods.  Inferences  may  be  carelessly  or  carefully  made.  They 
may  be  made  on  the  basis  of  a  great  background  of  previous  experience 
with  the  subject-matter,  or  no  experience  at  all.  For  example,  the  inferences 
a  good  mechanic  can  make  about  the  internal  condition  of  a  motor  by 
listening  to  it  are  often  startlingly  accurate,  while  the  inferences  made  by 
an  amateur  (if  he  tries  to  make  any)  may  be  entirely  wrong.  But  the 
common  characteristic  of  inferences  is  that  they  are  statements  about  mat- 
ters which  are  not  directly  known,  made  on  the  basis  of  what  has  been 
observed. 

The  avoidance  of  inferences  in  our  suggested  practice  in  report-writing 
requires  that  we  make  no  guesses  as  to  what  is  going  on  in  other  people's 
minds.  When  we  say,  "He  was  angry,"  we  are  not  reporting;  we  are  mak- 
ing an  inference  from  such  observable  facts  as  the  following:  "He  pounded 
his  fist  on  die  table;  he  swore;  he  threw  the  telephone  directory  at  his 
stenographer."  In  this  particular  example,  the  inference  appears  to  be 
fairly  safe;  nevertheless,  it  is  important  to  remember,  especially  for  the 
purposes  of  training  oneself,  that  it  is  an  inference.  Such  expressions  as 
"He  thought  a  lot  of  himself,"  "He  was  scared  of  girls,"  "He  has  an  in- 
feriority complex,"  made  on  the  basis  of  casual  social  observation,  and 


184  Writer 

"What  Russia  really  wants  to  do  is  to  establish  a  world  communist  dictator- 
ship/' made  on  the  basis  of  casual  newspaper  reading,  are  highly  inferen- 
tial. One  should  keep  in  mind  their  inferential  character  and,  in  our 
suggested  exercises,  should  substitute  for  them  such  statements  as  "He 
rarely  spoke  to  subordinates  in  the  plant,"  "I  saw  him  at  a  party,  and  he 
never  danced  except  when  one  of  the  girls  asked  him  to,"  "He  wouldn't 
apply  for  the  scholarship  although  I  believe  he  could  have  won  it  easily," 
and  "The  Russian  delegation  to  the  United  Nations  has  asked  for  A,  B, 
and  C.  Last  year  they  voted  against  M  and  N,  and  voted  for  X  and  Y. 
On  the  basis  of  facts  such  as  these,  the  newspaper  I  read  makes  the  in- 
ference that  what  Russia  really  wants  is  to  establish  a  world  communist 
dictatorship.  I  tend  to  agree." 

JUDGMENTS 

In  our  suggested  writing  exercise,  judgments  are  also  to  be  excluded. 
By  judgments,  we  shall  mean  all  expressions  of  the  writers  approval  or 
disapproval  of  the  occurrences,  persons,  or  objects  he  is  describing.  For 
example,  a  report  cannot  say,  "It  was  a  wonderful  car,"  but  must  say 
something  like  this:  "It  has  been  driven  50,000  miles  and  has  never  re- 
quired any  repairs."  Again  statements  like  "Jack  lied  to  us"  must  be  sup- 
pressed in  favor  of  the  more  verifiable  statement,  "Jack  told  us  he  didn't 
have  the  keys  to  his  car  with  him.  However,  when  he  pulled  a  handker- 
chief out  of  his  pocket  a  few  minutes  later,  a  bunch  of  car  keys  fell  out." 
Also  a  report  may  not  say,  "The  senator  was  stubborn,  defiant,  and  unco- 
operative," or  'The  senator  courageously  stood  by  his  principles";  it  must 
say  instead,  "The  senator's  vote  was  the  only  one  against  the  bill." 

Many  people  regard  statements  like  the  following  as  statements  of  "fact": 
"Jack  lied  to  us,"  "Jerry  is  a  thief"  "Tommy  is  clever"  As  ordinarily  em- 
ployed, however,  the  word  "lied"  involves  first  an  inference  (that  Jack 
knew  otherwise  and  deliberately  misstated  the  facts)  and  secondly  a  judg- 
ment (that  the  speaker  disapproves  of  what  he  has  inferred  that  Jack  did). 
In  the  other  two  instances,  we  may  substitute  such  expressions  as,  "Jerry 
was  convicted  of  theft  and  served  two  years  at  Waupun,"  and  "Tommy 
plays  the  violin,  leads  his  class  in  school,  and  is  captain  of  the  debating 
team."  After  all,  to  say  of  a  man  that  he  is  a  "thief"  is  to  say  in  effect, 
"He  has  stolen  and  will  steal  again"  —  which  is  more  of  a  prediction  than 
a  report.  Even  to  say,  "He  has  stolen,"  is  to  make  an  inference  (and 
simultaneously  to  pass  a  judgment)  on  an  act  about  which  there  may  be 
difference  of  opinion  among  those  who  have  examined  the  evidence  upon 
which  the  conviction  was  obtained.  But  to  say  that  he  was  "convicted  of 
theft"  is  to  make  a  statement  capable  of  being  agreed  upon  through  veri- 
fication in  court  and  prison  records. 

Scientific  verifiability  rests  upon  the  external  observation  of  facts,  not 
upon  the  heaping  up  of  judgments.  If  one  person  says,  "Peter  is  a  dead- 
beat,"  and  another  says,  "I  think  so  too/'  the  statement  has  not  been  veri- 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  185 

fied.  In  court  cases,  considerable  trouble  is  sometimes  caused  by  witnesses 
who  cannot  distinguish  their  judgments  from  the  facts  upon  which  those 
judgments  are  based.  Cross-examinations  under  these  circumstances  go 
something  like  this: 

WITNESS:  That  dirty  double-crosser  Jacobs  ratted  on  me. 

DEFENSE  ATTORNEY:  Your  honor,  I  object. 

JUDGE:  Objection  sustained.  (Witness's  remark  is  stricken  from  the  record.) 
Now,  try  to  tell  the  court  exactly  what  happened. 

WITNESS:  He  double-crossed  me,  the  dirty,  lying  ratl 

DEFENSE  ATTORNEY:  Your  honor,  I  object! 

JUDGE:  Objection  sustained.  (Witness's  remark  is  again  stricken  from  the 
record.)  Will  the  witness  try  to  stick  to  the  facts. 

WITNESS:  But  I'm  telling  you  the  facts,  your  honor.   He  did  double-cross  me. 

This  can  continue  indefinitely  unless  the  cross-examiner  exercises  some 
ingenuity  in  order  to  get  at  the  facts  behind  the  judgment.  To  the  witness 
it  is  a  "fact"  that  he  was  "double-crossed."  Often  hours  of  patient  ques- 
tioning are  required  before  the  factual  bases  of  the  judgment  are  revealed. 
Many  words,  of  course,  simultaneously  convey  a  report  and  a  judgment 
on  the  fact  reported,  as  will  be  discussed  more  fully  in  a  later  chapter. 
For  the  purposes  of  a  report  as  here  defined,  these  should  be  avoided. 
Instead  of  "sneaked  in,"  one  might  say  "entered  quietly";  instead  of 
"politicians,"  "congressmen,"  or  "aldermen,"  or  "candidates  for  office";  in- 
stead of  "bureaucrat,"  "public  official";  instead  of  "tramp,"  "homeless  un- 
employed"; instead  of  "dictatorial  set-up,"  "centralized  authority";  instead 
of  "crackpots,"  "holders  of  uncommon  views."  A  newspaper  reporter,  for 
example,  is  not  permitted  to  write,  "A  crowd  of  suckers  came  to  listen  to 
Senator  Smith  last  evening  in  that  rickety  firetrap  and  ex-dive  that  dis- 
figures the  south  edge  of  town."  Instead  he  says,  "Between  seventy-five 
and  a  hundred  people  heard  an  address  last  evening  by  Senator  Smith  at 
the  Evergreen  Gardens  near  the  South  Side  city  limits." 


How  Propaganda  Finds  Its  Way 
Into  the  Press    *> 

Chicago  Daily 


It  says  right  here  in  the  paper  ----  "  Are  there  any  college  students 
who  still  don't  know  you  can't  believe  all  you  read  in  the  papers?  But 
even  if  you  do  know  this  sad  fact,  are  you  actively  aware  of  the  particu- 

Reprinted  by  permission  of  the  Chicago  Daily  News.   The  article  appeared  in  the 
issue  of  October  15,  1938. 


186  Writer 

lar  bias  of  the  paper  you  habitually  read?  Do  you  apply  Hayakawa's 
distinctions  between  facts,  inferences,  and  judgments  to  your  daily 
paper?  What  really  opens  one's  eyes  to  the  way  newspaper  "reports" 
can  garble  and  slant  facts  is  to  read  reports  of  an  event  in  which  one 
was  personally  involved.  Why  not  write  an  analysis  of  such  a  report 
from  your  own  experience?  Or  compare  reports  of  a  single  event  by 
two  or  three  different  papers? 

WITH  RIVAL  SECTIONS  of  the  class  press,  engaged  in  bitter  recrimination 
over  the  publication  of  propaganda  as  unbiased  news,  you  are  invited  this 
week  to  sit  in  and  see  just  how  the  truth  can  be  poisoned  and  converted 
into  propaganda  that  meets  the  views  of  the  publisher. 

A  reporter  working  against  deadlines  gathers  the  facts  as  he  sees  them  and 
telephones  those  facts  to  his  city  desk.  The  man  on  the  desk  turns  the  re- 
porter over  to  a  rewriter,  and  in  this  article  a  fictitious  labor  story  will  be 
traced  from  its  inception. 

HERE  ARE  HYPOTHETICAL  FACTS 

The  facts  of  this  hypothetical  story  follow:  The  owners  of  the  Blank 
Foundry  at  Dash  street  and  Ogburn  avenue  refused  to  bargain  collectively 
with  their  employes. 

Three  weeks  ago  a  strike  was  called  by  the  union  which  was  an  affiliate  of 
the  C.LO. 

Twelve  men  were  picketing  the  plant. 

No  disorders  of  any  kind  had  occurred  up  to  today. 

About  3  P.M.  a  police  squad  from  the  Cloud  Street  Station  under  the  direc- 
tion of  Lt.  Thomas  Raider  arrived  at  the  plant  and  ordered  the  pickets  to 
disperse  because  "y°u  are  blocking  traffic." 

The  pickets  refused. 

The  police  went  after  them  with  swinging  clubs.  Four  of  the  pickets  were 
injured,  two  seriously,  and  taken  to  the  County  Hospital.  Five  other  pickets 
were  jailed  for  disorderly  conduct. 

Howard  Bystander,  a  salesman,  witness  of  the  clash,  said  the  police  as- 
saulted the  pickets  without  ordering  them  to  disperse.  He  also  told  how  a 
policeman  had  beaten  a  picket  unmercifully. 

The  striker  in  charge  of  the  picket  line  also  insisted  the  police  had  not 
ordered  them  to  disperse. 

The  police  refused  to  reveal  the  source  of  the  complaint  upon  which  they 
said  they  had  acted. 

Simple  little  story,  isn't  it?  Below  you'll  see  how  these  simple  little  facts 
can  be  twisted  to  demoniac  proportions. 

CLASS  PRESS 

An  armed  mob  of  C.I.O.  strikers,  carrying  banners  hailing  communism,  at- 
:acked  a  police  squad  at  the  strike-dlOsed  plant  of  the  Blank  Foundry,  Dash 


Same  Precepts  and  Examples  187 

street  and  Ogburn  avenue,  today  and  before  order  was  restored  four  strikers 
vere  injured.  Five  others  were  jailed. 

Police  said  they  had  been  summoned  to  the  plant  on  a  telephone  complaint 
hat  the  enraged  mob  were  strikers  who  were  blocking  traffic  and  threatening 
o  seize  physical  control  of  the  foundry. 

XsThey  approached,  police  Spokesman  said,  they  were  met  by  a  fusillade 
)f  rocks;  then  some^f  the  strikers  drew  guns. 

"I  calletT^o~the  stnKerT  to  drop" their  weapons,"  said  Police  Lt.  Thomas 
Raider,  who  was  in  charge  of  the  squad.  "My  call  brought  more  rocks.  I 
again  pleaded  with  the  men  and  when  they  again  replied  with  rocks,  I  told 
the  boys  to  disperse  them. 

'Tm  very  sorry  we  had  to  hurt  four  of  them,  but  I  think  the  police  did  their 
duty,"  added  Lt.  Raider.  "After  all,  the  police  have  no  interest  in  these  labor 
fights  other  than  to  see  that  the  laws  are  enforced." 

(SINCE  YOU  READERS  ARE  PRIVILEGED  TO  WITNESS  THIS  BIT  OF  FACT  POISON- 
ING YOU  MIGHT  TOUCH  THE  REWRITER  ON  THE  SHOULDER  AND  ASK  HIM  WHERE 
HE  GOT  ALL  THIS  STUFF,  THAT  THE  REPORTER  DIDN'T  TELL  HIM  ANYTHING  LIKE 
THAT  AT  ALL.) 

Before  the  police  went  to  the  strike  scene  reports  had  come  to  the  Cloud 
Street  Station  that  C.I.O.  agitators  were  fomenting  trouble,  that  the  strikers 
were  being  trained  in  army  formations  and  instructed  in  the  use  of  firearms. 

As  the  rewriter  finishes  his  lead  it  goes  to  the  city  desk.  There  it's  read 
and  passed  along  to  the  news  editor  with  the  suggestion  that  it  would  make 
a  good  story  to  put  a  line  on. 

The  news  editor  agrees  and  marks  the  copy,  "8-col.  96-pt.  Gothic  with 
one  col.  30-pt.  Gothic  cap  readout."  The  man  in  the  slot  (he's  the  head 
of  the  copy  desk)  next  receives  the  story.  He  tosses  it  to  a  copyreader  who 
does  the  editing  and  writes  the  heads. 

This  copyreader  goes  over  the  story,  then  begins  playing  with  words  for 
the  eight-column  line.  He  looks  up  suddenly  and  gazes  contemplatively 
at  the  man  in  the  slot,  his  immediate  superior,  then  a  smile  flickers  as  he 
writes: 

C.I.O.  MOB  ATTACKS  POLICE 

The  count  isjcight.   Now  for  the  readout: 

ji*ED  AGITATORS 
STAND  ACCUSED 
OF  INCITING  MEN 

The  copyreader  hands  the  story  and  heads  to  the  slot  man.  Maybe  a 
sardonic  grin  flashes  as  he  sees  the  approval  of  his  boss,  but  in  about  twenty 
minutes  the  paper's  on  the  street  and  another  crime  against  the  reputable 
press  of  the  nation  has  been  committed. 


188  Writer 

UNBIASED 

Four  striking  foundry  workers  were  injured  today  in  a  clash  at  the  gates  of 
the  Blank  Foundry  Company,  Dash  street  and  Ogburn  avenue,  when  police 
used  their  clubs  to  disperse  12  pickets  who  were  walking  on  the  sidewalks 
near  the  foundry  gate. 

The  injured  men,  all  suffering  from  head  contusions,  were  taken  to  the 
County  Hospital,  where  physicians  said  two  of  them,  William  Jones  of  23  West 
Thorn  street,  and  James  Howard  of  69  West  Dash  street,  may  have  suffered 
fractured  skulls.  The  other  two  in  the  hospital  were  Thomas  Joyce  of  2236 
Blank  street  and  David  Oval  of  6453  Blank  avenue. 

Arrested  and  jailed  in  the  Cloud  Street  Police  Station,  charged  with  dis- 
orderly conduct,  were  these  four  pickets:  Carroll  Judge  and  William  Guest  of 
2654  Blank  avenue;  William  James  and  Thomas  Johnson  of  6932  Blank  street. 

An  eyewitness  of  the  disorder,  Howard  Bystander,  a  salesman  employed  by 
the  Oil  Refining  Company  of  33  West  Jason  boulevard,  said  he  protested  to 
a  policeman  who  was  clubbing  Jones  while  he  lay  on  the  sidewalk,  and  the 
policeman  later  identified  as  Patrolman  Walter  Tory,  said,  "Get  the  hell  out  of 
here  or  you'll  get  it,  too." 

Patrolman  Tory  termed  Mr.  Bystander's  recital  a  "lie."  In  charge  of  the 
police  squad  was  Lt.  Thomas  Raider,  His  version  of  the  clash  ran  this  way: 
"We  received  complaints  that  these  picket  guys  were  obstructing  traffic,  so  we 
came  down  here  and  told  them  to  go  home.  They  wouldn't  listen  to  reason, 
so  we  had  to  touch  them  up  a  bit.  The  police  are  here  to  enforce  the  laws  and 
we're  going  to  do  just  that,  strike  or  no  strike." 

Tom  Blank,  secretary-treasurer  of  the  Foundry  Workers  Union,  a  C.I.O. 
affiliate,  who  was  in  charge  of  the  picketing,  said  after  the  fight: 

"We  had  12  pickets  walking  back  and  forth.  They  carried  no  banners  of 
any  kind  and  none  was  armed.  We  called  this  strike  three  weeks  ago  when 
our  demands  for  collective  bargaining  were  ignored  despite  the  Wagner  act. 

"For  the  last  week  we  had  been  getting  warnings  to  quit  picketing  or  the 
police  would  come  over  here  and  slug  us.  We  naturally  did  nothing  about 
the  warnings  because  we  were  breaking  no  laws. 

"This  afternoon  the  squad  car  came  up  and  ordered  the  men  away  from 
the  plant.  They  refused  and  the  police  began  to  swing  their  clubs. 

"I'm  going  to  have  our  lawyers  get  writs  to  free  the  men  held  in  jail  and 
we'll  likely  file  suit  for  damages  against  the  city,  but  where  politics  and  crime 
are  bedfellows  I  fear  we  haven't  much  chance  of  collecting  a  penny." 

This  story  also  goes  to  the  city  desk.  But  on  this  paper  the  city  desk  has 
been  instructed  to  be  fair  at  all  times,  so  the  city  editor  passes  it  along  to 
the  news  editor.  He  also  knows  that  this  publisher  demands  fairness  and 
decency  in  the  news,  so  he  orders  a  one-column  30  point  chelt.  head  and 
places  the  story  on  page  15.  The  head  reads: 

4  STRIKERS  HURT 
WHEN  COPS  SLUG 
PLANT  PICKETS 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  ,      189 

CLASS  PRESS 

Armed  with  riot  guns  and  strike  clubs,  an  enraged  squad  of  ponce  thugs, 
acting  on  orders  from  their  capitalistic  overlords,  today  interrupted  the  peace- 
ful picketing  of  the  Blank  Foundry  at  DasfTstreet  and  Ogburn  avenue  by 
beating  four  of  the  strikers  so  badly  that  they  were  taken  to  the  County 
Hospital,  where  physicians  indicated  two  of  them  would  likely  die. 

If  two  more  lives  are  sacrificed  on  the  altars  of  capjtajistic^reed  the 
workers  of  Jonesville  said  they  would  petition  President  Roosevelt  to  send  in 
federal  troops  to  patrol  the  strike  zone. 

The  absurdity  of  the  police  assertion  that  they  had  been  summoned  to  the 
scene  because  the  pickets  were  obstructing  traffic  was  shown  when  it  was 
established  that  but  12  men  were  in  the  line  at  any  time  since  the  strike  was 
called  three  weeks  ago  after  the  company  had  repeatedly  refused  to  recognize 
the  existence  of  the  Wagner  act  which  compels  collective  bargaining. 

When  questioned  as  to  the  identity  of  the  persons  who  had  filed  the  com- 
plaint, the  police  were  evasive,  saying  no  record  had  been  kept  of  the  calls. 

From  sources  close  to  the  Cloud  Street  Police  Station,  whose  officers  did 
the  work  of  their  capitalistic  employers,  came  the  information  that  the 
foundry  barons  paid  the  police  $5,000  to  disperse  the  pickets. 

This  could  not  be  confirmed  for  obvious  reasons,  but  the  source  from  which 
it  came  has  hitherto  been  most  reliable. 

Workers  throughout  the  Jonesville  district  were  incensed  over  the  outrage 
and  preparations  were  made  for  a  march  on  the  City  Hall,  where  redress  will 
be  demanded  of  Mayor  Sketch. 

One  of  the  wounded  pickets,  William  Jones,  was  beaten  unmercifully  by 
the  uniformed  city-paid  gunmen.  He  was  knocked  to  the  street  and  kicked. 
As  he  pleaded  with  the  policemen  they  laughed  at  him  and  continued  to  kick 
him. 

When  an  onlooker  went  to  his  assistance  he,  too,  was  slugged;  then  the 
assassins  returned  toTKeir  gory  task  of  pounding  Jones  as  he  Pegged  for  his 
life. 

"Please,  please,  please,"  he  begged,  "don't  kill  me.  I  have  a  wife  and  chil- 
dren. .  .  .  Please." 

As  the  last  word  came  he  was  kicked  in  the  mouth.  Blood  spurted  to  the 
sidewalk.  The  police  laughed.  What  did  they  care?  Were  not  the  united 
forces  of  capitalism  at  their  beck  and  call? 

After  the  injured  were  taken  to  the  hospital  and  the  police  had  arrested 
several  pickets,  the  wives  of  the  injured  men  appeared  at  the  gates  of  the 
foundry.  They  were  weeping.  Clutching  their  skirts  were  their  children. 

It  was  a  pathetic  picture. 

The  head  that  appeared  over  this  story  was  this  eight-column  line: 

POLICE  THUGS  SLUG  PICKETS 
The  readout  went  like  this: 

COPS   EMPLOYED 
BY  BOSSES   TO 
WORKERS 


190  Writer 

There  you  have  the  story  of  how  the  truth  can  be  twisted  to  fit  the  pat- 
tern of  the  publication  in  which  it  appears.  First  you  have  the  violently 
anti-labor  newspaper;  then  you  have  the  honest  newspaper  and  third  comes 
the  ardent  pro-labor  publication. 


World's  Best  Directions  Writer    *> 

JWacrorie  •  i9i8— 


How  do  I  get  to  Elmwood  Avenue?"  "What's  the  right  way  to 
wash  a  car?"  "How  do  you  play  cribbage?"  "How  do  f  get  this  cake  to 
come  out  right?"  We  all  ask  and  are  asked  such  questions  every  day. 
And  weVe  all  had  the  maddening  experience  of  ending  up  ten  miles 
from  Elmwood  Avenue,  with  a  soap-streaked  car,  with  a  handful  of 
incomprehensible  cards,  or  with  a  flat  cake  —  or  of  condemning  our 
inquirer  to  the  same  frustration.  To  give  clear,  accurate,  and  concise 
directions  is  a  real  challenge  to  one's  mastery  of  language  and  informa- 
tion. In  this  amusing  interview  "the  world's  best  directions  writer" 
talks  about  some  of  the  problems  a  professional  encounters  and  some 
of  his  principles  for  dealing  with  them. 

As  WE  TURNED  to  the  elevator  on  the  third  floor  of  the  Business  Associates 
Building  at  1115-20  Horace  Street,  we  saw  the  scratched  black  letters  on 
the  frosted  glass:  "Edward  Zybowski  —  Best  Directions  Writer  in  the 
World."  We  let  the  elevator  go  down  without  us. 

Mr.  Zybowski  was  willing  to  talk  to  us,  he  said,  because  at  the  moment 
he  was  stuck.  Tve  got  45  words  for  a  label  and  I've  got  to  get  it  down 
to  25." 

As  he  spoke,  he  lifted  the  rod  that  held  his  paper  against  the  typewriter 
roller  and  squinted  at  the  words.  He  was  ordinary-looking,  about  forty, 
the  black  hair  at  the  back  and  sides  of  his  head  emphasizing  the  whiteness 
of  the  balding  front  part.  Except  for  his  face:  it  was  kindly  but  looked 
mashed  in. 

"Not  kicking  about  copy  they  gave  me,"  he  said.  "Never  do.  More  copy, 
more  challenge  to  cut  it  till  you  wouldn't  believe  it  was  possible.  That's 
what  keeps  customers  comin'  to  me." 

"We  don't  want  to  keep  you  from  your  work.  .  .  . " 

That's  O.K.  I'm  stuck.  No  use  worryin'  and  worryin'  over  a  label.  Don't 

Reprinted  by  permission  of  the  author  from  College  English,  February,  1952  pp.  275- 
279. 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  191 

think  consciously  about  it  for  a  few  hours  when  you're  stuck.  Then  sud- 
denly your  unconscious  comes  through  for  you  —  whaml  There  it  is. 
Needs  only  final  touches.  No  ulcers  for  the  writer  that  way/' 

"Inspiration?"  we  ventured. 

"Inspiration!  That's  a  literary  myth.  Purely  a  matter  of  the  unconscious 
memories  and  tips  your  mind  has  stored  up.  Then  they  spill  over. 

"This  job's  more  than  just  writing,"  he  said.  "Deciding  position  and  size 
of  type  very  important."  He  picked  up  a  brightly  colored  jar  lid.  "Ad  on 
top  for  radio  program,  see?  Where's  the  direction?  On  side  of  lid  where 
you  put  your  fingers  to  open  it.  Why  there?  Most  logical  place  in  the 
world." 

We  read  the  instructions  printed  in  blue  along  the  fluted  edge: 

AFTER  OPENING,   KEEP   IN   REFRIGERATOR 
DO   NOT  FREEZE 

"You're  opening  the  jar,"  he  said,  "and  you  see  the  word  OPENING.  Stops 
you,  doesn't  it?  Same  thing  appears  on  other  side  of  lid.  Don't  ordinarily 
believe  in  presenting  any  direction  twice,  but  got  to  here.  So  important  — 
food'll  spoil  if  you  don't  follow  these  directions." 

"We're  just  curious,  Mr.  Zybowski.  What  is  difficult  about  writing  a 
direction  like  that?  Seems  the  only  way  one  could  say  this  idea." 

Mr.  Z.  looked  affronted  for  a  second,  then  smiled.  "Yeah,  no  one  can 
see  it  at  first.  And  that's  really  a  compliment  to  me.  Shows  I  did  it  the 
simplest  and  most  natural  way  it  could  be  done.  Now  take  this  jar-lid 
direction  —  copy  came  to  me  like  this: 

"'When  stored  at  normal  refrigerator  temperature  this  food  will  retain 
its  taste,  lightness,  color,  and  value  as  a  food  product;  but  when  exposed 
to  air  or  kept  at  freezing  temperature  will  suffer  a  chemical  change  which 
may  render  it  unfit  for  human  consumption.  It  is  therefore  recommended 
that  it  be  kept  at  refrigerated  temperature  when  not  being  used.  However, 
it  may  be  stored  at  room  temperature  safely  if  the  lid  has  never  been 
removed.' 

"I  get  that  essay  on  the  subject,  figure  I  got  a  space  a  half  an  inch  high 
around  the  lid,  and  a  damned  important  direction.  So  I  write: 

AFTER  OPENING,   KEEP  IN  REFRIGERATOR 
DO  NOT  FREEZE 

Our  respect  for  Mr.  Z.  was  growing.  "You  must  be  quite  an  expert  on 
the  English  language,"  we  said. 

"I  hate  to  put  it  this  way,"  he  said,  "but  I  think  I  know  more  about  Eng- 
lish usage  than  90  per  cent  of  the  college  teachers  in  the  country.  And 
also  how  to  use  English  —  that's  a  different  thing,  you  know.  Under  the 
how-to-use  part,  for  example,  there's  this  business  of  adjectives.  The  col- 
lege experts  who  think  they're  up  on  the  latest,  say  don't  use  adjectives. 
They  got  it  from  Hemingway,  they  claim.  I  read  all  the  books  and  maga- 


192  Writer 

zines  on  English,  too.  Almost  never  learn  anything  from  them.  When  you 
got  a  space  half  an  inch  square  facing  you  and  an  important  idea  to  get 
across,  you  learn  something  about  language.  What  was  I  going  to  say?" 

"You  were  speaking  of  not  using  adjectives." 

"Yeah.  They  say  don't  use  'em.  In  a  way  they're  right.  Adjectives  are 
usually  weak  as  hell."  Without  looking,  he  pointed  to  the  wall  behind  him 
where  hung  a  half-letter-size  sheet  of  blue  paper  framed  in  black.  "That 
one  up  there,"  he  said,  "has  no  adjectives.  Shouldn't  have  any.  It's  true 
you  should  use  'em  sparingly.  But  take  this  tea-bag  carton."  He  pulled 
a  box  from  a  desk  drawer.  "After  I  told  'em  how  to  make  hot  tea  on  the 
left  panel  here,  then  I  say:  Tor  perfect  iced  tea,  make  hot  tea  and  steep 
for  6  minutes.'  The  word  perfect  is  a  selling  word  there  —  plug.  I  don't 
like  to  write  any  plug  angles  into  directions.  Leave  that  slush  to  ad-writers, 
damn  their  lyin'  souls.  This  business  of  mine  you  can  be  honest  in.  Givin' 
directions  is  really  helpin'  people,  educatin'  them." 

We  could  see  Mr.  Z.  was  in  the  first  glow  of  a  long  speech,  but  we 
wanted  to  find  out  how  he  wrote  directions.  So  we  interrupted.  "We  can 
see  that  it  is  an  honorable  occupation  in  a  dirty  business  world.  Would  you 
mind  telling  us  more  about  this  tea-bag  label?  You  said  you  used  no  ad- 
jectives except  for  perfect,  but  in  the  hot-tea  instructions  we  see  the  words 
warmed  teapot,  fresh,  bubbling,  boiling  water." 

"Glad  you  mentioned  it.  Easy  to  misunderstand.  You  see,  warmed  tea- 
pot is  what  you've  got  to  use,  one  of  the  important  tricks  of  tea-making. 
So  warmed  isn't  an  idle  little  descriptive  word  thrown  in.  It's  the  kind  of 
teapot  you've  got  to  use  or  else  you  don't  get  first-rate  tea.  And  the  same 
way  with  fresh.  I  hate  a  word  like  that  usually  because  it  sounds  like  those 
damned  ad-writers'  slush.  You  know  how  you  always  see  the  word  on  the 
package  when  you  buy  five-day-old  stale  cupcakes  in  a  grocery  store.  But 
when  used  with  water,  the  word  fresh  means  something.  When  water 
stands  around,  it  loses  a  lot  —  loses,  to  be  exact.  ..."  He  reached  for  a 
chemical  dictionary. 

"Oh,  don't  bother,"  we  said.   "We  know  you're  right  there." 

"And  bubbling'9  he  said,  pushing  the  book  back  in  the  case  behind  him. 
"I'm  sure  you  know  there  are  many  different  stages  of  boiling,  and  'bub- 
bling' identifies  the  stage  we  want." 

"Yes,  so  in  that  sense  of  basic  meaning,  you  don't  consider  these  words 
adjectives,"  we  said. 

"Right,"  he  said,  beaming  with  satisfaction  as  he  leaned  back  in  his 
chair.  "One  point  those  modern  English  teachers  are  straight  on:  use  active 
verbs  whenever  possible.  I  use  'push,'  'lift,'  'scoop,'  'unscrew.'  Never  say 
anything  like,  'The  turn  of  the  cap  is  accomplished  by  a  twist.' "  He  smiled. 
"I  would  say,  Twist  cap  to  left.' " 

"We'll  have  to  go  soon,"  we  said.  Mr.  Z.  looked  crestfallen.  "Could 
you  show  us  the  direction  that  you  consider  your  masterpiece?" 

"Well,"  he  said,  "there  can  be  only  one  masterpiece  done  by  any  one 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  193 

artist.  I  couldn't  pick  which  is  best.  I  try  not  to  let  any  of  'em  get  out  of 
this  office  till  they're  at  least  pared  to  the  minimum.  They  may  not  always 
be  brilliant,  but  they  gotta  be  the  minimum  or  they  don't  go  out." 

"How  about  that  one  in  the  frame?  Any  special  significance  in  putting 
it  on  blue  paper?" 

He  stood  up  and  unhooked  it  from  the  wall.  "Blue  paper,  use  it  for  all 
final  O.K.'d  directions,  so  as  not  to  make  a  mistake  and  let  one  of  the 
earlier  versions  —  call  them  scratches  —  get  out  when  there's  a  better  one 
been  done."  He  held  the  frame  out  to  us.  "This  one,  I'll  admit,  is  pretty 
good." 

We  read: 

IF  TOO  HARD  -  WARM   •   IF  TOO  SOFT  -  COOL 
PEANUT  BUTTER  SOMETIMES  CONTRACTS 

CAUSING   AIR   SPACE   ON   SIDE    OF   JAR 

THIS   MAY  RESULT  IN  A  WHITE  APPEARANCE 

WHICH  IN  NO  WAY  AFFECTS  QUALITY  OR  TASTE. 

"I  like  this  one,"  he  said,  "'cause  no  adjectives  and  no  plug.  First  line 
there  got  the  concentration  of  a  line  from  Milton's  Samson,  my  favorite 
poem." 

We  noticed  the  adjective  white  before  appearance,  but  knew  now  that 
it  wasn't  an  adjective  to  Mr.  Z.  and,  for  that  matter,  to  us  any  more.  "Why 
so  little  punctuation?"  we  asked.  "One  period  at  the  end  and  then  only 
two  hyphens  in  the  first  line." 

"Glad  you  asked,"  he  said,  wiping  his  forehead  with  a  handkerchief. 
"Damnedest  thing,  punctuation!  Spent  years  mastering  American  English 
punctuation  when  I  started  this  business.  Had  to  know  it  first  but  all  along 
thought  I  wouldn't  use  it  much."  He  picked  up  the  framed  direction  from 
the  desk.  "Didn't  either. 

"Now  first  of  all,  you  see  these  words,"  said  Mr.  Z. 

"BUTTER  SOMETIMES  CONTRACTS 
CAUSING  AIR  SPACE 

Ordinary  punctuation  usage  says  comma  before  'causing,'  but  I  take  care 
of  that  by  ending  one  line  and  starting  another.  Never  need  punctuation 
when  eye  has  to  stop  and  move  over  and  down  to  a  new  line.  In  first  line 
I  use  hyphen  instead  of  dash  because  public  doesn't  know  hyphen  from 
a  dash  anyway.  Hyphen  saves  space,  and,  when  you  don't  use  both  in 
same  copy,  you  don't  need  to  differentiate  between  them.  Remember, 
my  context  for  a  direction  is  not  a  chapter  or  a  book  or  even  a  page,  just 
the  round  top  of  a  jar  lid  or  one  side  of  a  package.  Sometimes  no  other 
words  except  the  direction.  No  chance  for  confusing  with  antecedents  or 
references  several  pages  before.  And  thank  GodI  No  footnotes!  I  won't 
allow  any  asterisks.  Every  explanation's  gotta  be  complete  in  itself." 
"How  about  that  middle  dot  in  the  first  line?"  we  said. 


194  Writer 

"Oh,  that?  I'm  proud  of  that  middle  dot.  Easier  to  see  than  period. 
A  better  stop  really.  We  ought  to  use  'em  in  all  writing,  but  you  know 
the  power  of  convention  in  usage.  And  this  particular  middle  dot  is  in 
center  of  eight  words,  four  on  each  side,  with  equal  meaning  and  im- 
portance. A  really  logical  and  rational  mark  here,  don't  you  think?" 

We  had  to  agree.  "Anybody  can  see  it's  a  very  intelligent  job  of  direc- 
tion writing,"  we  said.  "There  is  only  one  thing  that  seems  inconsistent 
with  what  you  have  said  today." 

"What's  that?" 

"After  'CAUSING  AIR  SPACE  ON  SIDE  OF  JAR,'  you  say  'THIS  MAY  RESULT.'  It 
seems  that  the  'THIS'  is  a  waste  of  words.  Couldn't  you  say  'CAUSING  AIR 

SPACE  ON  SIDE  OF  JAR  AND  RESULTING  IN  A  WHITE  .   .   .'  ?" 

"Good  point,"  said  Mr.  Z.  "A  really  fine  point  of  the  trade.  I'm  glad, 
though,  you  didn't  object  to  'THIS'  and  say  it  is  a  vague  reference.  Any- 
body can  see  the  reference  is  perfectly  clear.  But  I'll  tell  you  why  I  used 
the  'THIS/  Gettin'  to  be  a  pretty  long  sentence,  that  one.  And  if  you  say 
'RESULTING,'  you  have  to  look  back  to  be  sure  what  the  relationship  is  be- 
tween 'RESULTING'  and  'CAUSING.'  In  a  sense  it  would  be  no  vaguer  than 
'THIS'  in  its  reference,  but  in  reality  it  would  be  harder  to  follow  because 
that  kind  of  parallelism  is  not  in  common  everyday  speech  use.  But  the 
'THIS'  construction  is.  Remember  my  audience  is  everybody.  A  lot  of  those 
everybodys  really  don't  read,  so  you  gotta  talk,  not  write,  to  'em." 

"What  would  you  say  is  the  secret  of  this  job,  if  there  is  one,  Mr.  Zy- 
bowski?" 

"Funny  thing,"  he  said,  "but  I've  thought  that  over  a  lot  and  come  to  an 
awfully  egotistic  conclusion.  The  secret  is  the  same  as  for  writing  a  great 
book  or  doing  anything  else  that  really  gives  something  to  people.  That  is 
to  learn  to  put  yourself  in  the  other  guy's  place." 

We  knew  nothing  to  say  to  such  a  statement.  "It's  been  a  pleasure,"  we 
said,  getting  up. 

"Come  in  again.   Sure  enjoyed  talkin*  to  you,"  he  said. 

As  we  got  to  the  door,  he  looked  up  from  the  typewriter.  "I  forgot  to 
tell  you  one  other  thing  about  this  peanut-butter  direction.  Notice  last 
phrase:  'IN  NO  WAY  AFFECTS  QUALITY  OR  TASTE.'  That's  the  time  I  beat  the 
ad-writers  at  their  own  game  and  still  didn't  misrepresent  anything  or 
slush  the  customer.  The  way  I  put  it,  it's  a  statement  of  fact,  yet  a  subtle 
idea  creeps  into  customer's  mind  that  the  quality  and  taste  of  this  butter 
is  exceptionally  good.  This  time  language  did  even  more  than  it  was 
expected  to  do." 

"Goodbye,"  we  said,  shaking  our  head  in  wonder  as  we  closed  the  frosted- 
glass  door.  We  believed  the  words  on  it  now. 


The  One-Egg  Cake    ** 

Qrace  'Brown  •  4859— *92P 


These  are  supposed  to  be  foolproof  directions  for  making  a  fool- 
proof cake.  Could  you  write  similarly  foolproof  directions  for  perform- 
ing some  simple  operation  —  tying  a  bow  tie,  hanging  a  dress,  making 
an  omelet  —  that  often  goes  wrong?  The  problem  is  to  reduce  the 
operation  to  its  essential  steps  and  to  foresee  where  the  performer  is 
likely  to  go  wrong. 

THE  ONE-EGG  CAKE  is  not  one  of  those  haughty,  high-bred  confections  that 
must  have  the  refinement  of  thrice-bolted  flour  and  dry-whipped  whites  of 
eggs,  that  cannot  allow  a  rude  foot  to  cross  the  kitchen  floor  while  they 
grandly  bake,  lest  their  sensitive,  poised  delicacy  swoon  from  shock.  The 
one-egg  cake  is  sturdy,  stocky,  humble.  It  asks  for  only  the  simplest  of 
materials,  and  shrinks  not  from  hastiness  in  the  handling.  It  evolved,  like 
the  hoof  of  the  horse  or  the  wing  of  the  bird,  in  answer  to  a  natural  need; 
or  in  answer  to  two  natural  needs:  that  of  the  impecunious,  for  dessert; 
and  that  of  the  busy  housewife,  for  time.  It  is  indigenous  anywhere. 
It  would  undoubtedly  be  edible  to  the  last  crumb  if,  flour  lacking,  it 
were  made  of  hominy  grits  or  bran  and  shorts.  But  in  spite  of  its  modesty, 
it  may  easily  attain  to  the  distinction  of  the  cake  in  Katherine  Mansfield's 
story:  "And  God  said:  'Let  there  be  cake/  And  there  was  cake.  And  God 
saw  that  it  was  good/' 

Its  implements  are  such  as  any  igloo  might  keep  on  the  kitchen  shelf: 
one  mixing  bowl,  one  cup,  one  tablespoon,  one  teaspoon,  one  sheet  of 
waxed  paper,  one  baking  pan.  Its  one  regret  is  that  it  must  occasionally 
deviate  in  material  from  the  absolute  unity  which  is  its  ideal.  But  its 
method  of  procedure  wastes  not  one  movement.  Anyone  who  wishes  to 
attempt  this  adventure  toward  perfect  unity  should  proceed  as  follows. 

Into  the  one  mixing  bowl  sift  an  indeterminate  quantity  of  flour  —  any 
kind  of  flour.  From  this  measure  two  cupsful  on  to  the  waxed  paper  and 
return  the  remainder  to  wherever  it  came  from.  Measure  one  cup  (the 
same  cup)  of  sugar  into  the  bowl.  Add  to  it  six  tablespoons  of  soft  shorten- 
ing. If  you  have  a  good  eye  for  quantity,  guess  at  it  and  put  in  one  six- 
tablespoon  lump.  Cream  them  together  with  one  clean  right  hand  — 
after  first  oiling  the  baking  pan  with  it,  and  thus  saving  one  washing. 
Next  break  the  one  egg  —  the  egg  of  the  title  role  —  into  the  bowl  and 
beat  it  briskly  with  the  tablespoon  into  the  creamed  sugar  and  shortening. 

Reprinted  from  Expository  Writing  by  Mervin  James  Curl  (Boston:  Houghton  Mifflin 
Co.,  1931),  pp.  158-159. 

195 


196  Writer 

Into  the  cup  (the  same  cup)  measure  two  thirds  of  a  cup  of  milk.  Pour 
one  third  into  the  bowl  and  shake  in  half  the  measured  flour.  Beat  the 
mixture  briskly.  Into  the  remaining  flour  measure  three  teaspoons  of 
baking  powder.  Shake  the  flour  and  baking  powder  into  the  sifter  held 
over  the  bowl  and  sift  them  in.  Pour  in  the  rest  of  the  milk.  Beat  again 
in  a  lively  manner.  Flavor  with  one  teaspoon  (the  same  teaspoon)  of 
vanilla  or  one  teaspoon  of  cinnamon  or  one  square  of  melted  chocolate. 
Pour  it  into  the  oiled  pan  and  bake  it  in  one  oven.  If  no  oven  is  handy, 
use  one  pressure  cooker.  If  it  is  served  to  one  husband,  one  daughter,  and 
one  son,  it  will  disappear  in  one  meal. 


Winter  Salad 

Sydney  Smith  •  {771-1845 

Can  you  separate  the  factual  part  of  these  directions  from  the 
judgment  part?  What  is  gained  or  lost  by  such  a  separation? 

Two  LARGE  POTATOES,  passed  through  kitchen  sieve, 

Unwonted  softness  to  the  salad  give; 

Of  mordant  mustard  add  a  single  spoon  — 

Distrust  the  condiment  which  bites  too  soon; 

But  deem  it  not,  though  made  of  herbs,  a  fault 

To  add  a  double  quantity  of  salt; 

Three  times  the  spoon  with  oil  of  Lucca  crown, 

And  once  with  vinegar  procured  from  town. 

True  flavor  needs  it,  and  your  poet  begs 

The  pounded  yellow  of  two  well-boiled  eggs. 

Let  onion  atoms  lurk  within  the  bowl, 

And,  half-suspected,  animate  the  whole; 

And  lastly,  on  the  favored  compound  toss 

A  magic  tea-spoon  of  anchovy  sauce. 

Then,  though  green  turtle  fail,  though  venison's  tough, 

Though  ham  and  turkey  are  not  boiled  enough, 

Serenely  full,  the  epicure  shall  say, 

"Fate  can  not  harm  me  —  I  have  dined  today ." 


5.  GIVING  SIGNIFICANCE 


The  Literary  Use  of  Language 

David  Daiches 


HayaJcawa's  distinctions  between  facts,  inferences,  and  judgments 
are  useful,  but  we  have  the  right  to  ask:  "Are  there  really  any  pure  facts, 
untainted  by  inference  or  judgment,  and  unwarped  by  the  act  of  per- 
ceiving them?"  This  is  a  question  to  puzzle  even  professional  philoso- 
phers, but  a  simpler  one  is  relevant  to  our  reading  and  writing:  "How 
often  do  we  want  statements  to  be  entirely  objective,  even  supposing 
they  can  be  so?  Are  we  not  sometimes  more  interested  in  what  events 
mean  than  in  their  mere  existence?"  Certainly  in  literature,  as  Daiches 
points  out,  the  writer's  effort  is  to  give  his  subject  a  human  significance. 

LIFE  is  A  JUNGLE  of  events  whose  meanings  are  at  once  too  casual  (and  to 
that  extent  insignificant)  and  too  full  of  possible  implication  (without  offer- 
ing us  any  guidance  as  to  which  implication  or  set  of  implications  we 
should  choose).  The  skilled  storyteller  makes  those  meanings  at  once 
more  significant  and  less  confused.  He  chooses  or  invents  a  tractable  piece 
of  life  and  proceeds  both  to  define  its  meaning  more  precisely  than  the 
meaning  of  any  event  in  real  life  can  be  known  (Can  we  even  talk  of  the 
"meaning"  of  events  in  real  life,  unless  we  mean  simply  their  causes  and 
effects?)  and  to  enrich  its  meaning  in  a  wholly  unique  manner.  Is  it  pos- 
sible simultaneously  to  define  a  meaning  more  precisely  and  to  enrich 
it?  We  can  see  that  this  is  possible  if  we  consider  what  the  skillful  writer 
of  fiction  (and,  indeed,  of  any  kind  of  creative  literature)  actually  does. 
Let  us  take  a  very  simple  example.  Consider  that  a  journalist  has  been 
asked  to  stand  for  a  while  in  a  city  street  and  then  write  up  an  account 
of  the  street  and  what  took  place  there.  As  soon  as  he  begins  to  write 
he  will  have  to  make  his  own  definition  of  his  subject.  What  in  fact  is 
meant  by  "the  street  and  what  took  place  there"?  To  define  even  the  street 
requires  a  choice:  is  it  simply  the  thoroughfare  leading  from  one  place  to 
another,  or  are  we  to  include  the  buildings  which  flank  it,  and  if  we  in- 
clude the  buildings  what  aspects  of  them  are  we  to  include?  A  street,  in 
fact,  can  be  considered  in  an  indefinite  number  of  ways.  As  for  defining 
"what  took  place  there,"  we  strike  here  immediately  the  problem  of  selec- 
tion. Clearly,  it  would  be  physically  impossible  as  well  as  wholly  pointless 

David  Daiches,  A  Study  of  Literature  (Ithaca,  New  York:  The  Cornell  University 
Press,  1948),  pp.  29-34. 

197 


198  Writer 

for  the  writer  to  give  an  account  of  every  single  event  which  in  fact  oc- 
curred while  he  was  there,  or  even  of  every  single  event  which  he  observed. 
Our  journalist  would  have  to  select  from  among  the  plethora  of  events  — 
the  actions  and  gestures  of  people,  the  movement  of  traffic,  all  the  in- 
numerable activities  of  city  life  —  what  he  considered  of  importance  or 
of  interest  on  some  standard  or  other.  He  would  have  to  define  "street" 
and  "what  took  place  there"  before  writing  or  in  the  process  of  writing.  And 
he  would  have  to  make  up  his  mind  about  his  perspective.  Should  he  try 
to  get  closer  to  some  things  than  to  others;  should  he  vary  the  distance  at 
which  he  stood  from  people  and  things,  or  maintain  a  simple  gradation 
from  foreground  to  background?  These  and  other  questions  he  will  have 
to  answer,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  in  presenting  us  with  a  verbal 
picture  of  that  street  at  that  time.  Having  done  so,  he  will  have  presented 
to  us  aspects  of  a  situation  which  we  can  recognize  as  one  which  we 
either  have  known  or  might  have  known.  If  he  can  use  the  language  with 
any  ability  at  all,  even  if  he  can  put  together  a  number  of  sentences  which 
say,  however  badly  or  crudely,  what  he  saw  (or  rather,  what  he  thought 
he  saw )  that  he  considered  worth  mentioning,  we  shall  be  able  to  recognize 
his  account  as  corresponding  to  something  of  which  we  have  had  ex- 
perience —  assuming,  of  course,  that  we  are  products  of  the  same  civiliza- 
tion and  are  familiar  with  that  kind  of  city  street.  That  is  to  say,  we 
should  recognize  the  description  as,  in  a  general  sort  of  way  at  least,  true. 
The  writer,  without  using  any  other  skill  than  is  required  of  a  reasonably 
competent  journalist,  would  have  defined  his  subject  intelligibly  and  recog- 
nizably. Out  of  the  moving  chaos  of  reality  he  will  have  isolated  a  static 
picture,  which  a  certain  class  of  readers  would  consent  to,  as  reflecting  in 
some  sense  an  actual  state  of  affairs. 

Our  journalist  might  do  more  than  that.  He  might  manage  to  convey 
to  readers  who  have  not  had  experience  of  that  kind  of  city  street  at  all  a 
sense  of  the  authenticity  of  his  picture.  He  can  do  this  by  "style,"  by  the 
selection  and  organization  of  his  imagery,  by  using  words  in  such  a  way 
that  the  reader  is  persuaded  into  recognizing  not  what  he  has  seen  but 
what  he  might  have  seen.  The  first  stage  is  where  we  recognize  what  we 
know,  the  second  is  where  we  recognize  what  we  might  have  known,  and 
there  is  a  third  —  where,  while  we  recognize  what  we  have  known  or 
might  have  known,  we  at  the  same  time  see,  and  know  to  be  authentic, 
what  we  should  never  have  seen  for  ourselves.  The  interesting  fact  is  that 
where  a  writer  succeeds  in  making  authentic  a  picture  of  a  kind  that  his 
readers  might  not  have  seen,  he  will  very  probably  be  doing  more  —  he 
will  be  giving  them  at  the  same  time  a  new  insight  which  coexists  with  the 
feeling  of  recognition.  This  is  because  "style,"  that  way  of  writing  which 
makes  convincing  in  its  own  right  what  would  otherwise  be  merely  recog- 
nizable, can  rarely  do  this  without  going  further.  For  such  a  style  is  the 
result  of  the  ability  to  choose  and  order  words  in  such  a  way  that  what  is 
described  becomes  not  merely  something  existing,  something  which  hap- 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  199 

pens  to  be  in  a  particular  place  at  a  particular  time,  but  something  that  is 
linked  with  man's  wider  fate,  that  suggests,  and  keeps  on  suggesting  the 
more  we  read,  ever  wider  categories  of  experiences  until  there  is  included 
something  with  which  we  can  make  contact,  which  touches  what  we,  too, 
find  recognizable.  And  then  it  becomes  irrelevant  whether  what  is  de- 
scribed exists  in  fact  in  the  real  world  or  not.  The  mere  journalist  drops  his 
words  one  by  one,  and  there  they  lie,  in  the  order  in  which  he  dropped 
them,  specific  but  still,  corresponding  accurately  enough  to  what  the  au- 
thor intends  to  say,  but  having  no  further  life  of  their  own.  But  the  true 
creative  writer  drops  his  words  into  our  mind  like  stones  in  a  pool,  and  the 
ever-widening  circles  of  meaning  eventually  ring  round  and  encompass  the 
store  of  our  own  experience.  And  —  to  continue  the  metaphor  —  in  doing 
so  they  provide  a  new  context  for  familiar  things,  and  what  has  been  lying 
half  dead  in  our  mind  and  imagination  takes  on  new  life  in  virtue  of  its 
new  context,  so  that  we  not  only  recognize  what  we  feel  we  knew  but  see 
the  familiar  take  on  rich  and  exciting  new  meanings. 

If,  therefore,  the  journalist  who  described  what  went  on  in  a  particular 
city  street  during  a  given  period  of  time  had  the  literary  skill  (and  the 
initial  combination  of  feeling  for  life  and  feeling  for  language  which  alone 
can  make  such  a  skill  realizable)  to  present  his  observations  in  such  a  way 
that  when  he  wrote  of  businessmen  entering  and  leaving  the  bank,  children 
coming  home  from  school,  housewives  out  shopping,  loiterers,  barking 
dogs,  lumbering  busses,  or  whatever  else  he  cared  to  note,  he  was  able  to 
convey  to  the  reader  something  of  the  tragedy  or  the  comedy  of  human 
affairs,  wringing  some  human  insight  out  of  these  multifarious  incidents  so 
that  the  reader  not  only  sees  what  he  already  knew  or  even  admits  as 
authentic  what  he  did  not  know,  but  sees  simultaneously  what  he  knew  and 
what  he  never  saw  before,  recognizes  the  picture  in  the  light  of  his  deepest, 
half -intuitive  knowledge  of  what  man's  experience  is  and  can  be  and  at  the 
same  time  see  it  as  a  new  illumination  —  if  he  can  do  this,  then  he  has 
moved  from  journalism  into  art.  He  has  shown  that  he  can  make  the  means 
of  expression  comment  on  what  is  expressed  so  as  simultaneously  to  define 
and  expand  his  subject  matter:  define  it  by  using  words  that  block  off  the 
wrong  meanings,  which  show  with  complete  compulsion  that  what  is  meant 
is  this  rather  than  that,  and  expand  it  by  choosing  and  arranging  words 
and  larger  units  of  expression  so  that  they  set  going  the  appropriate  over- 
tones and  suggestions  which  help  to  elevate  a  description  of  people's  be- 
havior to  an  account  of  man's  fate. 


Melville  Writes  of  the 

Whale-Line     &•    Howard  P.  Vincent  •  4904- 


In  his  best  novel,  Moby-Dick  (1851),  Herman  Melville  made  much 
use  of  factual  material  on  whales  and  whaling  from  the  books  of 
scientists  and  travellers.  However,  everything  Melville  "took"  he  trans- 
formed, i.e.,  he  added  significance  to  it.  The  following  account  shows 
Melville's  skill  in  transforming  and  heightening  ordinary  "facts." 

MELVILLE'S  ACCOUNT  of  "The  Line"  turns  out,  as  we  now  might  expect,  to 
be  both  a  clear  description  of  the  whale  line  and  a  metaphor.  The  whale 
line  is  a  physical  fact  and  a  "linked  analogy/'  The  chapter  is  short,  de- 
scribing (a)  the  English  whale  line,  (b)  the  American,  (c)  the  whale 
line's  use,  and  (d)  the  metaphorical  extension  of  the  physical  object.  Also, 
here  is  the  first  of  another  doublet,  for  as  the  author  says  in  the  opening 
paragraph,  he  mentions  the  whale  line  because  of  "the  whaling  scene 
shortly  to  be  described,  as  well  as  for  the  better  understanding  of  all 
similar  scenes  elsewhere  presented."  When  we  read  the  next  chapter,  we 
notice  the  emphasis  given  to  the  whale  line,  just  as  promised.  We  also  re- 
call "The  Line"  as  we  read  the  closing  episode  of  Ahab's  life,  just  as  we  will 
remember  the  Line's  "hempen  intricacies"  when  we  see  the  corpse  of 
Fedallah  entwined  by  the  rope  around  Moby  Dick's  back.  There  is  al- 
most no  expository  fact  in  Moby-Dick  which  does  not  have  some  narrative 
or  thematic  function  besides. 

The  books  by  Beale  and  Bennett  furnished  Melville  with  information 
for  his  chapter.  Although  the  description  of  the  American  manila  rope, 
which  had  superseded  the  English  hemp,  was  perhaps  from  Melville's 
memory  —  there  is  no  description  of  one  in  the  whaling  books  he  used  — 
nevertheless,  for  his  description  of  the  hemp  rope  Melville  adapted  the 
following  passage  from  Bennett: 

The  whale-line,  provided  for  British  South-Seamen,  combines  so  com- 
pletely the  best  qualities  of  cordage,  that  it  may  be  regarded  as  the  height  of 
perfection  in  our  rope  manufacture.  It  is  constructed  of  the  best  hemp, 
slightly  but  uniformly  imbued  by  the  vapour  of  tar;  is  two  inches  in  cir- 
cumference; and  composed  of  three  strands;  each  strand  containing  seventeen 
yarns,  each  of  which  is  calculated  to  sustain  the  weight  of  one  hundred  and 
twelve  pounds.  Of  this  line,  220  fathoms  is  the  ordinary  complement  of  each 
boat.  It  is  coiled,  continuously,  in  two  tubs,  and  in  neat  and  compact  horizon- 
tal layers,  or  "sheaves,"  each  extremity  of  the  line  being  kept  exposed,  the 

Howard  P.  Vincent,  The  Trying-out  of  Moby  Dick  (Boston:  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.), 
pp.  227-231.  Copyright,  1949,  by  Howard  P.  Vincent. 

200 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  201 

one  for  attachment  to  the  harpoons,  the  other  (which  is  provided  with  a 
loop,  or  "splice,")  for  connecting  it  to  the  line  of  a  second  boat,  should  any 
probability  arise  that  its  entire  length  would  be  taken  out  by  the  whale. 

When  ready  for  running,  the  commencement  of  the  line  is  passed  over  the 
logger-head  at  the  stern,  and  thence  forward,  over  the  oars,  to  be  fastened  to 
the  harpoons  in  the  bow:  about  fifteen  fathoms,  termed  "box-line,"  being  kept 
coiled  in  the  head,  or  box,  of  the  boat,  to  accompany  the  harpoon  when  it  is 
first  darted.  At  the  spot  where  the  box-line  commences,  a  mark,  commonly  a 
piece  of  red  cloth,  is  attached,  to  enable  the  whaler  to  judge  at  what  distance 
the  boat  may  be  from  the  harpoon,  and  consequently  from  the  whale,  when 
the  sea  is  turbid  with  blood. 

Melville's  enrichment  and  vivification  of  Bennett's  description  is  an  illustra- 
tion of  expository  writing  at  its  best.  Memory  as  well  as  imagination  have 
been  added  to  the  "source"  passage: 

The  line  originally  used  in  the  fishery  was  of  the  best  hemp,  slightly 
vapored  with  tar,  not  impregnated  with  it,  as  in  the  case  of  ordinary  ropes; 
for  while  tar,  as  ordinarily  used,  makes  the  hemp  more  pliable  to  the  rope- 
maker,  and  also  renders  the  rope  itself  more  convenient  to  the  sailor  for 
common  ship  use;  yet,  not  only  would  the  ordinary  quantity  too  much  stiffen 
the  whale-line  for  the  close  coiling  to  which  it  must  be  subjected;  but  as  most 
seamen  are  beginning  to  learn,  tar  in  general  by  no  means  adds  to  the  rope's 
durability  or  strength,  however  much  it  may  give  it  compactness  and  gloss. 

Of  late  years  the  Manilla  rope  has  in  the  American  fishery  almost  entirely 
superseded  hemp  as  a  material  for  whale-lines;  for,  though  not  so  durable  as 
hemp,  it  is  stronger,  and  far  more  soft  and  elastic;  and  I  will  add  (since  there 
is  an  aesthetics  in  all  things),  is  much  more  handsome  and  becoming  to  the 
boat,  than  hemp.  Hemp  is  a  dusky,  dark  fellow,  a  sort  of  Indian;  but  Manilla 
is  as  a  golden-haired  Circassian  to  behold. 

The  whale-line  is  only  two  thirds  of  an  inch  in  thickness.  At  first  sight,  you 
would  not  think  it  so  strong  as  it  really  is.  By  experiment  its  one  and  fifty 
yarns  will  suspend  a  weight  of  one  hundred  and  twenty  pounds;  so  that  the 
whole  rope  will  bear  a  strain  nearly  equal  to  three  tons.  In  length,  the  com- 
mon sperm  whale-line  measures  something  over  two  hundred  fathoms.  To- 
wards the  stern  of  the  boat  it  is  spirally  coiled  away  in  the  tub,  not  like  the 
worm-pipe  of  a  still  though,  but  so  as  to  form  one  round,  cheese-shaped  mass 
of  densely  bedded  "sheaves,"  or  layers  of  concentric  spiralizations,  without 
any  hollow  but  the  "heart"  or  minute  vertical  tube  formed  at  the  axis  of  the 
cheese.  As  the  least  tangle  or  kink  in  the  coiling  would,  in  running  out,  in- 
fallibly take  somebody's  arm,  leg,  or  entire  body  off,  the  utmost  precaution  is 
used  in  stowing  the  line  in  its  tub.  Some  harpooneers  will  consume  almost  an 
entire  morning  in  this  business,  carrying  the  line  high  aloft,  and  then  reeving 
it  downwards  through  a  block  towards  the  tub,  so  as  in  the  act  of  coiling  to 
free  it  from  all  possible  wrinkles  and  twists. 

In  the  English  boats  two  tubs  are  used  instead  of  one;  the  same  line  being 
continuously  coiled  in  both  tubs.  There  is  some  advantage  in  this;  because 
these  twin-tubs  being  so  small  they  fit  more  readily  into  the  boat,  and  do  not 
strain  it  so  much;  whereas,  the  American  tub,  nearly  three  feet  in  diameter 


202  Writer 

and  of  proportionate  depth,  makes  a  rather  bulky  freight  for  a  craft  whose 
planks  are  but  one-half  inch  in  thickness;  for  the  bottom  of  the  whale-boat  is 
like  critical  ice,  which  will  bear  up  a  considerable  distributed  weight,  but  not 
very  much  of  a  concentrated  one.  When  the  painted  canvas  cover  is  clapped 
on  the  American  tub-line,  the  boat  looks  as  if  it  were  pulling  off  with  a 
prodigious  great  wedding-cake  to  present  to  the  whales. 

Both  ends  of  the  line  are  exposed;  the  lower  end  terminating  in  an  eye- 
splice  or  loop  coming  up  from  the  bottom  against  the  side  of  the  tub,  and 
hanging  over  its  edge  completely  disengaged  from  everything.  This  arrange- 
ment of  the  lower  end  is  necessary  on  two  accounts.  First:  In  order  to  facili- 
tate the  fastening  to  it  of  an  additional  line  from  a  neighboring  boat,  in  case 
the  stricken  whale  should  sound  so  deep  as  to  threaten  to  carry  off  the  entire 
line  originally  attached  to  the  harpoon.  In  these  instances,  the  whale  of 
course  is  shifted  like  a  mug  of  ale,  as  it  were,  from  the  one  boat  to  the  other; 
though  the  first  boat  always  hovers  at  hand  to  assist  its  consort.  Second:  This 
arrangement  is  indispensable  for  common  safety's  sake;  for  were  the  lower  end 
of  the  line  in  any  way  attached  to  the  boat,  and  were  the  whale  then  to  run 
the  line  out  to  the  end  almost  in  a  single,  smoking  minute  as  he  sometimes 
does,  he  would  not  stop  there,  for  the  doomed  boat  would  infallibly  be 
dragged  down  after  him  into  the  profundity  of  the  sea;  and  in  that  case  no 
town-crier  would  ever  find  her  again. 

Before  lowering  the  boat  for  the  chase,  the  upper  end  of  the  line  is  taken 
aft  from  the  tub,  and  passing  round  the  loggerhead  there,  is  again  carried 
forward  the  entire  length  of  the  boat,  resting  crosswise  upon  the  loom  or 
handle  of  every  man's  oar,  so  that  it  jogs  against  his  wrist  in  rowing;  and  also 
passing  between  the  men,  as  they  alternately  sit  at  the  opposite  gunwales,  to 
the  leaded  chocks  or  grooves  in  the  extreme  pointed  prow  of  the  boat,  where 
a  wooden  pin  or  skewer  the  size  of  a  common  quill  prevents  it  from  slipping 
out.  From  the  chocks  it  hangs  in  a  slight  festoon  over  the  bows,  and  is  then 
passed  inside  the  boat  again;  and  some  ten  or  twenty  fathoms  (called  box- 
line)  being  coiled  upon  the  box  in  the  bows,  it  continues  its  way  to  the 
gunwale  still  a  little  further  aft,  and  is  then  attached  to  the  short-warp  —  the 
rope  which  is  immediately  connected  with  the  harpoon;  but  previous  to  that 
connexion  the  short-warp  goes  through  sundry  mystifications  too  tedious  to 
detail. 

But  what  gives  the  chapter  importance  is  Melville's  metaphor  of  the 
whale  line  as  one  of  the  dangers  threatening  all  men,  death  being  ready  to 
seize  suddenly  any  one  of  us  even  as  the  loop  of  the  whale  line  seizes  the 
whaleman  —  even,  as  we  are  to  find,  Ahab.  Melville  comes  out  into  the 
open  with  his  point,  with  an  ironic  and  unexpected  twist  in  the  last  sen- 
tence: 

All  men  live  enveloped  in  whale-lines.  All  are  born  with  halters  round 
their  necks;  but  it  is  only  when  caught  in  the  swift,  sudden  turn  of  death, 
that  mortals  realize  the  silent,  subtle,  ever-present  perils  of  life.  And  if  you 
be  a  philosopher,  though  seated  in  the  whale-boat,  you  would  not  at  heart 
feel  one  whit  more  of  terror,  than  though  seated  before  your  evening  fire 
with  a  poker,  and  not  a  harpoon,  by  your  side. 


A  Sum  in  Addition 

"William  JWarch  •  1894— 


"Facts"  by  themselves  may  very  well  be  like  the  random  ink-blots 
of  the  psychologists'  Rorschach  test  in  which  the  person  being  tested 
reveals  something  about  his  own  personality  by  saying  what  shapes  he 
thinks  he  sees  in  the  blots.  In  this  story  several  different  characters  re- 
veal fundamentally  different  attitudes  toward  life  by  the  different  ways 
they  interpret  the  same  set  of  facts. 

COLLINS  said:  "Sure  there's  a  corkscrew  in  there.  You'll  find  it  chained  to 
the  wall.  ...  All  hotels  have  'em."  And  Menefee  answered  from  the  bath- 
room: "Well,  there's  not  one  in  here.  Look  for  yourselves  if  you  boys  don't 
believe  me." 

"That's  a  fine  way  to  treat  drummers,"  said  Red  Smith.  "I'll  write  and 
complain  to  the  management."  He  got  up  and  stretched  himself.  "I'll  look 
in  the  closet,"  he  said.  "Maybe  I'll  find  something  to  open  it  with  in  there." 

Menefee  came  back  into  the  room  and  put  the  unopened  bottle  on  the 
dresser,  his  head  drawn  backward  and  turned  at  an  angle,  his  eyes  squint- 
ing up.  He  ground  out  the  cigarette  that  had  been  burning  between  his 
relaxed  lips.  "You  boys  keep  your  pants  on,"  he  said;  "I'll  go  down  and 
borrow  a  corkscrew  off  a  bellhop."  He  put  on  his  coat  and  went  into  the 
hall,  closing  the  door  behind  him. 

Collins  sat  back  and  rested  his  legs  on  the  vacant  chair,  looking  lazily 
over  his  shoulder  at  Red  Smith.  Red  was  pulling  out  drawers  noisily,  or 
standing  tiptoe  to  peer  at  shelves  just  above  his  head.  Then  he  stopped, 
picked  up  something  and  came  into  the  room  with  it.  It  was  a  sheet  of 
hotel  stationery  covered  with  writing,  and  it  had  been  crumpled  into  a  ball 
and  thrown  into  the  closet. 

Red  opened  the  sheet  and  smoothed  it  flat,  and  when  he  had  read  it,  he 
passed  it  to  Collins,  a  peculiar  look  on  his  face.  "Read  this,  Wade,"  he  said. 

Collins  read  slowly,  the  paper  held  close  to  his  eyes.  At  the  right  of  the 
sheet,  and  commencing  it,  was  the  following  entry:  Cosh  on  hand  $17.45. 
Then,  to  the  left,  were  the  following  entries: 

Expenses  babyies  fuiierel  (about)  $148.00 

Wifes  hospital  bill  (about)  65.00 

Owe  to  grocery  store  28.17 

Back  Rent  (2  mo.— make  it  3)  127.25 

Incidentals   25.00 

$394.42 

From  Trial  Balance.  Copyright,  1945,  by  William  March.  Reprinted  by  permission  of 
Harcourt,  Brace  and  Company,  Inc.,  pp.  31-34. 

203 


204  Writer 

A  little  farther  down  the  paper  were  the  following  words:  Will  borrow 
four  hundred  dollars  from  Mr.  Sellwood.  This  sentence  was  repeated,  like 
an  exercise  in  penmanship,  over  and  over,  until  the  paper  was  filled  with  it. 
At  first  the  words  were  written  boldly,  heavily,  and  there  were  places  where 
the  pen  had  broken  through  the  paper  behind  the  determination  of  the 
writer;  but  as  the  writing  progressed,  the  man  seemed  less  sure  of  himself, 
as  if  his  courage  and  his  certainty  were  fading  away.  The  sentences  were 
more  perfect  here,  with  an  occasional  mended  letter;  they  were  written 
more  slowly,  as  if  each  letter  were  pondered.  The  last  sentence  was  not 
finished  at  all.  It  dwindled  thinly  into  wavering  illegibility. 

Collins  had  read  the  thing  through  and  sat  with  it  in  his  hands.  He  said 
sympathetically:  "Tough!  Tough!"  then  added:  "He  knew  he  couldn't  work 
it  out.  He  knew  he  was  fooling  himself;  so  he  crumpled  up  the  paper  and 
threw  it  in  the  closet." 

Red  Smith  sat  down,  resting  his  elbows  on  his  knees,  his  bright,  coppery 
hair  shining  in  the  light.  Suddenly  he  had  a  picture  of  a  shabby  little  man 
sitting  in  this  same,  cheap  hotel  room,  going  over  his  problem,  over  and 
over,  and  finding  no  answer  to  it.  Finally  he  said:  "Don't  you  suppose  Mr. 
Sellwood  let  him  have  the  four  hundred  bucks  after  all?  Why  not?" 

Collins  sighed,  the  Masonic  emblem  resting  on  his  fat  stomach  rising  with 
his  breath.  He  spoke  mockingly:  "Of  course  not,  Little  Sunshine.  ...  Of 
course  not!  Maybe  our  friend  went  to  see  Mr.  Sellwood  all  right,  but  Mr. 
Sellwood  said  that  times  were  hard  right  then  and  he  had  a  lot  of  expenses 
of  his  own.  ...  I  guess  that's  about  the  way  it  worked  out." 

Red  lifted  his  alert  face.  "I  think  you're  wrong,  Wade,  I  think  everything 
worked  out  all  right/' 

But  Collins  shook  his  head.  "Not  a  chance,  young  fellow!"  he  said.  "Not 
a  chance!" 

Red  replied;  "Just  the  same,  I  think  Mr.  Sellwood  let  him  have  the  four 
hundred  bucks.  He  was  an  old  friend  of  the  family,  you  see.  .  .  .  Then  he 
got  a  good  job  for  this  fellow  that  paid  more  money,  and  this  fellow  came 
back  home  almost  running.  He  came  up  the  steps  three  at  the  time  to  tell 
his  wife.  Everything  worked  out  fine  for  them  after  that." 

"Maybe  he  met  Santa  Glaus  on  the  way  home,"  said  Wade  heavily,  "and 
old  Santa  slipped  the  money  in  his  stocking."  Then  he  said  more  seriously: 
"The  fellow  who  wrote  that  is  sitting  in  some  other  cheap  hotel  tonight 
still  figuring,  and  still  trying  to  find  an  answer,  but  he  won't,  because  there 
isn't  any  answer  for  him  to  find." 

The  door  opened  then,  and  Menefee  stood  before  them,  a  corkscrew  in 
his  hand.  "Everything's  okay,"  he  said.  "Everything's  all  set." 

"We'll  leave  it  to  Menefee,"  said  Red  Smith.  "Give  him  the  writing, 
Wade,  and  let's  see  what  he  thinks." 

Collins  passed  over  the  paper,  and  Menefee  examined  it  carefully,  as  if 
he  did  not  understand  it,  before  he  looked  at  the  two  men,  puzzled  a  little. 

"What's  it  all  about?  This  doesri't  make  sense  to  me." 


Some  Precepts  and  Examples  205 

Collins  shook  his  head.   "Good  old  Menefee!   Trust  him!" 

Red  laughed  a  little  and  said  earnestly:  "Don't  you  see  the  point,  Mene- 
fee?" 

Menefee  read  the  thing  through  again,  turned  the  paper  over  and 
examined  the  writing  once  more.  'Tm  damned  if  I  do,"  he  said  helplessly. 
Then  a  moment  later  he  added  triumphantly:  "Oh,  sure,  sure,  I  see  the 
point  now!  Sure  I  do.  It's  added  up  wrong." 

Red  Smith  looked  at  Collins,  and  they  both  laughed.  "It  is  added  up 
wrong!"  said  Menefee,  indignant  and  a  little  hurt.  "Eight  and  five  are 
thirteen  and  eight  are  twenty-one  .  .  .  seven  makes  twenty-eight  and  five, 
thirty-three  —  not  thirty-four  like  it  is  here." 

But  Collins  and  Red  Smith  continued  to  laugh  and  to  shake  their  heads. 

"All  right,"  said  Menefee.  "I'm  dumb;  I  admit  it."  He  pulled  in  his  lips 
and  spoke  in  a  high,  quavering  voice:  "Come  on,  boys:  let  your  poor  old 
grandmother  in  on  the  joke!"  He  picked  up  the  bottle  and  poured  three 
drinks  into  three  tumblers,  grumbling  a  little  to  himself:  "I  never  saw  such 
superior  bastards  in  all  my  life  as  you  two  are,"  he  said. 


On  a  Photo  of  Sgt.  Ciardi  a  Year  Later 

John  Ciardi  •  i9i6— 


"The  camera  never  lies.  .  .  ."  Or  does  it?  This  poem  takes  up  again 
our  problem  of  "fact"  and  interpretation. 

THE  SGT.  stands  so  fluently  in  leather, 

So  poster-bolstered  and  so  newsreel-jawed 

As  death's  costumed  and  fashionable  brother, 

My  civil  memory  is  overawed. 

Behind  him  see  the  circuses  of  doom 
Dance  a  finale  chorus  on  the  sun. 
He  leans  on  gun  sights,  doesn't  give  a  damn 
For  dice  or  stripes,  and  waits  to  see  the  fun. 

The  cameraman  whose  ornate  public  eye 
Invented  that  fine  bravura  look  of  calm 
At  murderous  clocks  hung  ticking  in  the  sky 
Palmed  the  deception  off  without  a  qualm. 

"On  a  Photo  of  Sgt.  Ciardi  a  Year  Later,"  from  Other  Skies  (Boston:  Little,  Brown 
and  Co.,  and  the  Atlantic  Monthly  Press,  1947),  reprinted  by  permission  of  the  author. 
Originally  published  in  The  New  Yorker. 


206  Writer 

Even  the  camera,  focused  and  exact 
To  a  two  dimensional  conclusion, 
Uttered  its  formula  of  physical  fact 
Only  to  lend  data  to  illusion. 

The  camera  always  lies.  By  a  law  of  perception 

The  obvious  surface  is  always  an  optical  ruse. 

The  leather  was  living  tissue  in  its  own  dimension, 

The  holsters  held  benzedrine  tablets,  the  guns  were  no  use. 

The  careful  slouch  and  dangling  cigarette 
Were  always  superstitious  as  Amen. 
The  shadow  under  the  shadow  is  never  caught: 
The  camera  photographs  the  camerman. 


Part     x  k.  * — s        Three 


"I  used  to  feel 
that  way  myself." 


THE 
ARCH  OF  EXPERIENCE 


MOST  of  the  selections  in  Part  Three  deal  with  events  universal  to  man- 
kind: birth,  family  relations,  growing  up,  love,  the  passage  of  time,  death. 
Other  selections  in  this  part  of  the  book  have  grown  out  of  special  experi- 
ences or  skills  which  are  the  product  of  specialized  knowledge.  All  these 
pieces  relate  experiences  to  which  none  of  us  can  be  indifferent.  You  will 
find  that  reading  them  will  heighten  your  interest  in  and  your  awareness 
of  similar  experiences  you  have  already  known  or  heard  about.  Noticing 
this,  you  may  well  come  to  the  conclusion  that  here  is  one  of  the  greatest 
values  of  reading  and  writing  —  that  it  heightens  and  deepens,  widens  and 
concentrates,  whatever  you  have  done  and  are  doing  now.  Seeing  into 
other  people's  lives  increases  your  understanding  of  your  own. 

You  will  also  find  here  some  answers  to  one  of  your  immediate  and 
pressing  questions:  "What  shall  I  write  about?"  The  principal  answer  is, 
"Write  about  what  you  know."  If  you  say  that  this  is  obvious,  you  have 
not  denied  its  truth.  If  you  say  that  you  know  nothing,  then  the  selections 
which  follow  should  show  you  that,  on  the  contrary,  you  have  a  great  deal 
to  write  about  Perhaps  you  have  merely  undervalued  your  own  experi- 


208  The  Arch  of  Experience 

ences,  and  their  capacity  to  interest  others.  Perhaps  you  have  never  really 
examined  them  face  to  face,  never  put  their  real  significance  into  words, 
never  analyzed  and  phrased  the  things  that  have  happened  to  you  and  what 
these  things  have  meant  to  you. 

For  the  secret  is  not  in  answering  the  question,  "What  shall  I  write 
about?"  It  is  in  answering,  well  and  searchingly,  the  deeper  question,  "What 
shall  I  say  about  my  subject?"  Here  is  the  significance,  the  meaning,  of 
what  you  can  say;  here,  as  you  will  see  when  you  read  the  following  pages, 
is  the  real  thing  these  writers  have  to  offer  you.  And  what  it  comes  down 
to  is  the  thinking  they  have  done  about  their  subjects,  not  the  subjects  them- 
selves. 

Everything  lies  before  you  for  your  writing:  your  family,  and  your  feel- 
ings about  them;  your  school  experiences,  in  class  and  out;  playmates  and 
classmates;  the  teachers  who  terrorize,  inspire,  or  bore  you.  You  can  write 
about  your  roommate,  your  last  night's  date,  the  heavy  snow  that  fell  this 
morning,  the  tedium  of  a  laboratory  on  a  spring  day,  or  the  excitement  of 
a  laboratory  when  you  finally  identify  the  unknown.  And  all  this  —  your- 
self —  is  only  a  starting  point.  Beyond  that  lies  the  world  of  ideas,  of  skills 
and  special  knowledge,  hobbies,  interests,  and  subjects  you  have  started 
to  explore.  Tennyson  said, 

All  experience  is  an  arch  wherethro  gleams  that  untravelled  world  whose 

margin  fades 
For  ever  and  for  ever  when  I  move. 

You  cannot  fail  to  find  that  your  experiences,  by  the  very  act  of  writing 
about  them,  have  been  sharpened,  made  more  enjoyable  —  or  more  bear- 
able —  than  before  you  faced  them  in  the  fret  of  the  class  assignment. 


and  'Beyond 
the  family 


"My  sister  Hazel  was  the 
pretty  one." 


The  Family  Constellation    & 

Alfred  Adler  -  *87O-i937 


Here  is  a  provocative  example  of  how  the  theories  of  psychologists 
can  give  us  insights  into  the  forces  that  shaped  our  own  personalities. 
This  essay  will  give  you  food  for  lively  thought  as  you  read  the  other 
pieces  in  this  section  —  particularly  Anderson's  "Brother  Death"  — 
and  as  you  consider  possible  subjects  for  writing  in  your  own  family 
experiences  or  those  of  your  friends.  Of  course  you  need  not  accept 
Adler's  generalizations;  such  attempts  to  find  consistent  patterns  in 
human  behavior  usually  have  a  recognizable  amount  of  truth  in  them, 
but  equally  valuable  may  be  the  truths  you  discover  in  arguing  against 
them.  Adler's  particular  contribution  to  psychology  was  the  "inferiority 
complex/'  the  idea  that  it  is  our  feeling  of  inadequacy  rather  than  of 
superiority  which  drives  us  to  keep  proving  to  ourselves  and  others  that 
we  amount  to  something.  You  will  see  how  he  applies  this  theory  to 
the  special  problem  of  "the  family  constellation." 

WE  HAVE  often  drawn  attention  to  the  fact  that  before  we  can  judge  a 
human  being  we  must  know  the  situation  in  which  he  grew  up.   An  im- 

Alfred  Adler,  Understanding  Human  Nature  (New  York:  Greenberg,  1946),  pp.  149- 
159. 

209 


210  The  Arch  of  Experience 

portant  moment  is  the  position  which  a  child  occupied  in  his  family  con- 
stellation. Frequently  we  can  catalogue  human  beings  according  to  this 
view  point  after  we  have  gained  sufficient  expertness,  and  can  recognize 
whether  an  individual  is  a  first-born,  an  only  child,  the  youngest  child,  or 
the  like. 

People  seem  to  have  known  for  a  long  time  that  the  youngest  child  is 
usually  a  peculiar  type.  This  is  evidenced  by  the  countless  fairy  tales, 
legends,  Biblical  stories,  in  which  the  youngest  always  appears  in  the  same 
light.  As  a  matter  of  fact  he  does  grow  up  in  a  situation  quite  different 
from  that  of  all  other  people,  for  to  parents  he  represents  a  particular  child, 
and  as  the  youngest  he  experiences  an  especially  solicitous  treatment.  Not 
only  is  he  the  youngest,  but  also  usually  the  smallest,  and  by  consequence, 
the  most  in  need  of  help.  His  other  brothers  and  sisters  have  already  ac- 
quired some  degree  of  independence  and  growth  during  the  time  of  his 
weakness,  and  for  this  reason  he  usually  grows  up  in  an  atmosphere  warmer 
than  that  which  the  others  have  experienced. 

Hence  there  arise  a  number  of  characteristics  which  influence  his  at- 
titude toward  life  in  a  remarkable  way,  and  cause  him  to  be  a  remarkable 
personality.  One  circumstance  which  seemingly  is  a  contradiction  for  our 
theory  must  be  noted.  No  child  likes  to  be  the  smallest,  the  one  whom  one 
does  not  trust,  the  one  in  whom  one  has  no  confidence,  all  the  time.  Such 
knowledge  stimulates  a  child  to  prove  that  he  can  do  everything.  His 
striving  for  power  becomes  markedly  accentuated  and  we  find  the  youngest 
very  usually  a  man  who  has  developed  a  desire  to  overcome  all  others, 
satisfied  only  with  the  very  best. 

This  type  is  not  uncommon.  One  group  of  these  youngest  children  excels 
every  other  member  of  the  family,  and  becomes  the  family's  most  capable 
member.  But  there  is  another  more  unfortunate  group  of  these  same 
youngest  children;  they  also  have  a  desire  to  excel,  but  lack  the  necessary 
activity  and  self-confidence,  as  a  result  of  their  relationships  to  their  older 
brothers  and  sisters.  If  the  older  children  are  not  to  be  excelled,  the 
youngest  frequently  shies  from  his  tasks,  becomes  cowardly,  a  chronic 
plaintiff  forever  seeking  an  excuse  to  evade  his  duties.  He  does  not  be- 
come less  ambitious,  but  he  assumes  that  type  of  ambition  which  forces 
him  to  wriggle  out  of  situations,  and  satisfy  his  ambition  in  activity  outside 
of  the  necessary  problems  of  life,  to  the  end  that  he  may  avoid  the  danger 
of  an  actual  test  of  ability,  so  far  as  possible. 

It  will  undoubtedly  have  occurred  to  many  readers  that  the  youngest 
child  acts  as  though  he  were  neglected  and  carried  a  feeling  of  inferiority 
within  him.  In  our  investigations  we  have  always  been  able  to  find  this 
feeling  of  inferiority  and  have  been  able  also  to  deduce  the  quality  and 
fashion  of  his  psychic  development  from  the  presence  of  this  torturing 
sentiment.  In  this  sense  a  youngest  child  is  like  a  child  who  has  come  into 
the  world  with  weak  organs.  What  the  child  feels  need  not  actually  be 
the  case.  It  does  not  matter  what  really  has  happened,  whether  an  individ- 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  211 

ual  is  really  inferior  or  not.  What  is  important  is  his  interpretation  of  his 
situation.  We  know  very  well  that  mistakes  are  easily  made  in  childhood. 
At  that  time  a  child  is  faced  with  a  great  number  of  questions,  of  pos- 
sibilities, and  consequences. 

What  shall  an  educator  do?  Shall  he  impose  additional  stimuli  by  spur- 
ring on  the  vanity  of  this  child?  Should  he  constantly  push  him  into  the 
limelight  so  that  he  is  always  the  first?  This  would  be  a  feeble  response  to 
the  challenge  of  life.  Experience  teaches  us  that  it  makes  very  little  dif- 
ference whether  one  is  first  or  not.  It  would  be  better  to  exaggerate  in 
the  other  direction,  and  maintain  that  being  first,  or  the  best,  is  unimportant. 
We  are  really  tired  of  having  nothing  but  the  first  and  best  people.  History 
as  well  as  experience  demonstrates  that  happiness  does  not  consist  in  being 
the  first  or  best.  To  teach  a  child  such  a  principle  makes  him  one-sided; 
above  all  it  robs  him  of  his  chance  of  being  a  good  fellow-man. 

The  first  consequence  of  such  doctrines  is  that  a  child  thinks  only  of 
himself  and  occupies  himself  in  wondering  whether  someone  will  over- 
take him.  Envy  and  hate  of  his  fellows  and  anxiety  for  his  own  position, 
develop  in  his  soul.  His  very  place  in  life  makes  a  speeder  trying  to  beat 
out  all  others,  of  the  youngest.  The  racer,  the  marathon  runner  in  his  soul, 
is  betrayed  by  his  whole  behavior,  especially  in  little  gestures  which  are 
not  obvious  to  those  who  have  not  learned  to  judge  his  psychic  life  in  all 
his  relationships.  These  are  the  children,  for  instance,  who  always  march 
at  the  head  of  the  procession  and  cannot  bear  to  have  anyone  in  front 
of  them.  Some  such  race-course  attitude  is  characteristic  of  a  large  number 
of  children. 

This  type  of  the  youngest  child  is  occasionally  to  be  found  as  a  clear  cut 
type  example  although  variations  are  common.  Among  the  youngest  we 
find  active  and  capable  individuals  who  have  gone  so  far  that  they  have 
become  the  saviors  of  their  whole  family.  Consider  the  Biblical  story  of 
Joseph!  Here  is  a  wonderful  exposition  of  the  situation  of  the  youngest 
son.  It  is  as  though  the  past  had  told  us  about  it  with  a  purpose  and  a 
clarity  arising  in  the  full  possession  of  the  evidence  which  we  acquire  so 
laboriously  today.  In  the  course  of  the  centuries  much  valuable  material 
has  been  lost  which  we  must  attempt  to  find  again. 

Another  type,  which  grows  secondarily  from  the  first,  is  often  found. 
Consider  our  marathon  runner  who  suddenly  comes  to  an  obstacle  which 
he  does  not  trust  himself  to  hurdle.  He  attempts  to  avoid  the  difficulty 
by  going  around  it.  When  a  youngest  child  of  this  type  loses  his  courage 
he  becomes  the  most  arrant  coward  that  we  can  well  imagine.  We  find 
him  far  from  the  front,  every  labor  seems  too  much  for  him,  and  he  be- 
comes a  veritable  "alibi  artist"  who  attempts  nothing  useful,  but  spends 
his  whole  energy  wasting  time.  In  any  actual  conflict  he  always  fails. 
Usually  he  is  to  be  found  carefully  seeking  a  field  of  activity  in  which 
every  chance  of  competition  has  been  excluded.  He  will  always  find  ex- 
cuses for  his  failures.  He  may  contend  that  he  was  too  weak  or  petted,  or 


212  The  Arch  of  Experience 

that  his  brothers  and  sisters  did  not  allow  him  to  develop.  His  fate  be- 
comes more  bitter  if  he  actually  has  a  physical  defect,  in  which  case  he  is 
certain  to  make  capital  out  of  his  weakness  to  justify  him  in  his  desertion. 

Both  these  types  are  hardly  ever  good  fellow  human  beings.  The  first 
type  fares  better  in  a  world  where  competition  is  valued  for  itself.  A 
man  of  this  type  will  maintain  his  spiritual  equilibrium  only  at  the  cost 
of  others,  whereas  individuals  of  the  second  remain  under  the  oppressive 
feeling  of  their  inferiority  and  suffer  from  their  lack  of  reconciliation  with 
life  as  long  as  they  live. 

The  oldest  child  also  has  well  defined  characteristics.  For  one  thing 
he  has  the  advantage  of  an  excellent  position  for  the  development  of  his 
psychic  life.  History  recognizes  that  the  oldest  son  has  had  a  particularly 
favorable  position.  Among  many  peoples,  in  many  classes,  this  advan- 
tageous status  has  become  traditional.  There  is  no  question  for  instance 
that  among  the  European  farmers  the  first  born  knows  his  position  from 
his  early  childhood  and  realizes  that  some  day  he  will  take  over  the  farm, 
and  therefore  he  finds  himself  in  a  much  better  position  than  the  other 
children  who  know  that  they  must  leave  their  father's  farm  at  some  time; 
in  other  strata  of  society  it  is  frequently  held  that  the  oldest  son  will  some 
day  be  the  head  of  the  house.  Even  where  this  tradition  has  not  actually 
become  crystallized,  as  in  simple  bourgeois  or  proletarian  families,  the 
oldest  child  is  usually  the  one  whom  one  accredits  with  enough  power  and 
common  sense  to  be  the  helper  or  foreman  of  his  parents.  One  can  im- 
agine how  valuable  it  is  to  a  child  to  be  constantly  entrusted  with  respon- 
sibilities by  his  environment.  We  can  imagine  that  his  thought  processes 
are  somewhat  like  this:  "You  are  the  larger,  the  stronger,  the  older,  and 
therefore  you  must  also  be  cleverer  than  the  others." 

If  his  development  in  this  direction  goes  on  without  disturbance  then 
we  shall  find  him  with  the  traits  of  a  guardian  of  law  and  order.  Such 
persons  have  an  especially  high  evaluation  of  power.  This  extends  not 
only  to  their  own  personal  power,  but  affects  their  evaluation  of  the 
concepts  of  power  in  general.  Power  is  something  which  is  quite  self- 
understood  for  the  oldest  child,  something  which  has  weight  and  must 
be  honored.  It  is  not  surprising  that  such  individuals  are  markedly  con- 
servative. 

The  striving  for  power  in  the  case  of  a  second  born  child  also  has  its 
especial  nuance.  Second  born  children  are  constantly  under  steam,  striv- 
ing for  superiority  under  pressure:  the  race  course  attitude  which  de- 
termines their  activity  in  life  is  very  evident  in  their  actions.  The  fact 
that  there  is  someone  ahead  of  him  who  has  already  gained  power  is  a 
strong  stimulus  for  the  second  born.  If  he  is  enabled  to  develop  his  powers 
and  takes  up  the  battle  with  the  first  born  he  will  usually  move  forward 
with  a  great  deal  of  £lan,  the  while  the  first  born,  possessing  power,  feels 
himself  relatively  secure  until  the  second  threatens  to  surpass  him. 

This  situation  has  also  been  described  in  a  very  lively  fashion  in  the 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  213 

Biblical  legend  of  Esau  and  Jacob.  In  this  story  the  battle  goes  on  re- 
lentlessly, not  so  much  for  actual  power,  but  for  the  semblance  of  power; 
in  cases  like  this  it  continues  with  a  certain  compulsion  until  the  goal  is 
reached  and  the  first  born  is  overcome,  or  the  battle  is  lost,  and  the  re- 
treat, which  often  evinces  itself  in  nervous  diseases,  begins.  The  attitude 
of  the  second  born  is  similar  to  the  envy  of  the  poor  classes.  There  is  a 
dominant  note  of  being  slighted,  neglected,  in  it.  The  second  born  may 
place  his  goal  so  high  that  he  suffers  from  it  his  whole  life,  annihilates 
his  inner  harmony  in  following,  not  the  veritable  facts  of  life,  but  an 
evanescent  fiction  and  the  valueless  semblance  of  things. 

The  only  child  of  course  finds  himself  in  a  very  particular  situation.  He 
is  at  the  utter  mercy  of  the  educational  methods  of  his  environment.  His 
parents,  so  to  speak,  have  no  choice  in  the  matter.  They  place  their  whole 
educational  zeal  upon  their  only  child.  He  becomes  dependent  to  a  high 
degree,  waits  constantly  for  someone  to  show  him  the  way,  and  searches 
for  support  at  all  times.  Pampered  throughout  his  life,  he  is  accustomed 
to  no  difficulties,  because  one  has  always  removed  difficulties  from  his 
way.  Being  constantly  the  center  of  attention  he  very  easily  acquires  the 
feeling  that  he  really  counts  for  something  of  great  value.  His  position 
is  so  difficult  that  mistaken  attitudes  are  almost  inevitable  in  his  case. 
If  the  parents  understand  the  dangers  of  his  situation,  to  be  sure,  there 
is  a  possibility  of  preventing  many  of  them,  but  at  best  it  remains  a  diffi- 
cult problem. 

Parents  of  "only"  children  are  frequently  exceptionally  cautious,  people 
who  have  themselves  experienced  life  as  a  great  danger,  and  therefore 
approach  their  child  with  an  inordinate  solicitude.  The  child  in  turn 
interprets  their  attentions  and  admonitions  as  a  source  of  additional  pres- 
sure. Constant  attention  to  health  and  well  being  finally  stimulate  him 
to  conceive  of  the  world  as  a  very  hostile  place.  An  eternal  fear  of  diffi- 
culties arises  in  him  and  he  approaches  them  in  an  unpractised  and  clumsy 
manner  because  he  has  tested  only  the  pleasant  things  in  life.  Such  chil- 
dren have  difficulties  with  every  independent  activity  and  sooner  or  later 
they  become  useless  for  life.  Shipwrecks  in  their  life's  activity  are  to  be 
expected.  Their  life  approaches  that  of  a  parasite  who  does  nothing,  but 
enjoys  life  while  the  rest  of  the  world  cares  for  his  wants. 

Various  combinations  are  possible  in  which  several  brothers  and  sisters 
of  the  same  or  opposite  sexes  compete  with  each  other.  The  evaluation 
of  any  one  case  therefore  becomes  exceedingly  difficult.  The  situation  of 
an  only  boy  among  several  girls  is  a  case  in  point.  A  feminine  influence 
dominates  such  a  household  and  the  boy  is  pushed  into  the  background, 
particularly  if  he  is  the  youngest,  and  sees  himself  opposed  by  a  closed 
phalanx  of  women.  His  striving  for  recognition  encounters  great  difficulties. 
Threatened  on  all  sides,  he  never  senses  with  certainty  the  privilege  which 
in  our  retarded  masculine  civilization  is  given  to  every  male.  A  lasting 
insecurity,  an  inability  to  evaluate  himself  as  a  human  being,  is  his  most 


214  The  Arch  of  Experience 

characteristic  trait.  He  may  become  so  intimidated  by  his  womenfolk  that 
he  feels  that  to  be  a  man  is  equivalent  to  occupying  a  position  of  lesser 
honor.  On  the  one  hand  his  courage  and  self-confidence  may  easily  be 
eclipsed,  or  on  the  other  the  stimulus  may  be  so  drastic  that  the  young 
boy  forces  himself  to  great  achievements.  Both  cases  arise  from  the  same 
situation.  What  becomes  of  such  boys  in  the  end  is  determined  by  other 
concomitant  and  closely  related  phenomena. 

We  see  therefore  that  the  very  position  of  the  child  in  the  family  may 
lend  shape  and  color  to  all  the  instincts,  tropisms,  faculties  and  the  like, 
which  he  brings  with  him  into  the  world.  This  affirmation  robs  of  all 
value  the  theories  of  the  inheritance  of  especial  traits  or  talents,  which 
are  so  harmful  to  all  educational  effort.  There  are  doubtless  occasions 
and  cases  in  which  the  effect  of  hereditary  influences  can  be  shown,  as  for 
instance,  in  a  child  who  grows  up  removed  entirely  from  his  parents,  yet 
develops  certain  similar  "familial"  traits.  This  becomes  much  more  com- 
prehensible if  one  remembers  how  closely  certain  types  of  mistaken  de- 
velopment in  a  child  are  related  to  inherited  defects  of  the  body.  Take 
a  given  child  who  comes  into  the  world  with  a  weak  body  which  results, 
in  turn,  in  his  greater  tension  toward  the  demands  of  life  and  his  environ- 
ment. If  his  father  came  into  the  world  with  similarly  defective  organs 
and  approached  the  world  with  a  similar  tension,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at  that  similar  mistakes  and  character  traits  should  result.  Viewed  from 
this  standpoint  it  would  seem  to  us  that  the  theory  of  inheritance  of  ac- 
quired characteristics  is  based  upon  very  weak  evidence. 

From  our  previous  descriptions  we  may  assume  that  whatever  the  errors 
to  which  a  child  is  exposed  in  his  development,  the  most  serious  conse- 
quences arise  from  his  desire  to  elevate  himself  over  all  his  fellows,  to 
seek  more  personal  power  which  will  give  him  advantages  over  his  fellow 
man.  In  our  culture  he  is  practically  compelled  to  develop  according  to 
a  fixed  pattern.  If  we  wish  to  prevent  such  a  pernicious  development  we 
must  know  the  difficulties  he  has  to  meet  and  understand  them.  There 
is  one  single  and  essential  point  of  view  which  helps  us  to  overcome  all 
these  difficulties;  it  is  the  view-point  of  the  development  of  the  social  feeling. 
If  this  development  succeeds,  obstacles  are  insignificant,  but  since  the 
opportunities  for  this  development  are  relatively  rare  in  our  culture,  the 
difficulties  which  a  child  encounters  play  an  important  rdle.  Once  this  is 
recognized  we  shall  not  be  surprised  to  find  many  people  who  spend  their 
whole  life  fighting  for  their  lives  and  others  to  whom  life  is  a  vale  of 
sorrows.  We  must  understand  that  they  are  the  victims  of  a  mistaken 
development  whose  unfortunate  consequence  is  that  their  attitude  toward 
life  also  is  mistaken. 

Let  us  be  very  modest  then,  in  our  judgment  of  our  fellows,  and  above 
all,  let  us  never  allow  ourselves  to  make  any  moral  judgments,  judgments 
concerning  the  moral  worth  of  a  human  being!  On  the  contrary  we  must 
make  our  knowledge  of  these  facts  socially  valuable.  We  must  approach 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  215 

such  a  mistaken  and  misled  human  being  sympathetically,  because  we 
are  in  a  postion  to  have  a  much  better  idea  of  what  is  going  on  within 
him  than  he  is  himself.  This  gives  rise  to  important  new  points  of  view 
in  the  matter  of  education.  The  very  recognition  of  the  source  of  error 
puts  a  great  many  influential  instruments  for  betterment  into  our  hands. 
By  analysing  the  psychic  structure  and  development  of  any  human  being 
we  understand  not  only  his  past,  but  may  deduce  further  what  his  future 
probably  will  be.  Thus  our  science  gives  us  some  conception  of  what 
a  human  being  really  is.  He  becomes  a  living  being  for  us,  not  merely 
a  flat  silhouette.  And  as  a  consequence  we  can  have  a  richer  and  more 
meaningful  sense  of  his  value  as  a  fellow  human  than  is  usual  in  our  day. 


At  Grandmother's 

Edgar  Lee  ^Masters  •  i869-i950 


Rich  memories  of  childhood  are  brought  bade  by  Edgar  Lee 
Masters,  author  of  Spoon  River  Anthology  (1915),  in  the  first  chapter 
of  his  autobiography.  He  remembers  a  place  of  wonder,  an  old  family 
homestead,  whose  rooms  and  furniture,  sights  and  sounds,  books,  ani- 
mals, food,  and  old  people  enchanted  him.  All  of  us  have  similar 
memories  of  places,  where  we  made  magical  discoveries  in  bureau 
drawers,  trunks,  attics,  or  tool  shops,  and  where  grandparents,  aunts, 
or  uncles  told  stories  of  legendary  moments  in  family  history.  We 
remember  other  places,  too,  and  people  and  things  associated  with 
them,  which  filled  us  with  opposite  emotions. 

WE  WENT  FREQUENTLY  to  the  old  homestead,  often  for  Sunday  dinner.  So 
gradually  the  house  emerged  to  my  eyes,  and  became  a  place  of  enchanting 
charm.  My  own  home  very  early,  really  from  the  first,  seemed  a  poor  and 
barren  place  compared  with  the  house  of  my  grandparents.  There  were  a 
thousand  reasons  for  this,  chief  of  which  might  be  mentioned  the  many 
objects  of  wonder,  the  books  and  curios  that  my  grandparents  had  gathered 
and  cherished;  the  grindstone  in  the  yard  which  could  be  driven  by  a  pedal; 
the  tools  in  the  carpenter's  shop;  my  grandmother's  canaries  and  redbird; 
the  fascinating  pictures  on  the  walls;  the  wonderful  parlor  with  its  piano, 
and  much  else.  But  there  was  such  order,  such  comfort  at  that  old  house. 
The  meals  were  always  on  time  —  and  the  table  was  filled  with  delicious 
things.  My  grandmother  was  always  laughing;  my  grandfather  always  sing- 

From  Across  Spoon  River  by  Edgar  Lee  Masters.    Copyright,  1936,  by  Edgar  Lee 
Masters,  and  reprinted  by  permission  of  Rinehart  &  Company,  Inc.,  Publishers. 


216  The  Arch  of  Experience 

ing,  or  saying  quaint  things;  and  both  of  them  were  so  full  of  affection  for 
me,  and  so  indulgent  toward  me.  Soon  this  old  house  became  a  very  heaven 
to  my  imagination;  while  in  point  of  fact  it  was  not  much  of  a  house,  and 
not  to  be  compared  with  some  of  the  other  farmhouses  around  it,  a  number 
of  which  were  of  brick  and  much  larger. 

It  was  only  a  story  and  a  half  high,  and  had  but  nine  rooms.  But  it  was 
built  of  walnut  and  hickory  timbers  set  upon  a  brick  foundation.  Its 
weather  boarding  was  of  walnut,  for  in  1850  when  the  house  was  built,  the 
woods  abounded  in  walnut  trees,  which  the  farmers  ruthlessly  cut  down  to 
make  rails  for  fences,  or  logs  for  hogpens,  or  what  not.  There  was  a  board 
fence  painted  white  in  front  of  the  house;  and  a  brick  walk  leading  from  the 
gate  to  the  front  door.  My  grandmother  had  planted  red  and  yellow  roses 
under  the  windows  of  the  living  room;  and  she  had  flower  beds  of  tulips  and 
phlox;  and  she  had  lilac  bushes.  The  ubiquitous  pine  trees  adorned  either 
side  of  the  walk;  and  to  one  side  were  fine  maples  under  which  we  used  to 
sit  on  hot  days.  Entering  the  front  door  one  came  into  a  hallway  from  which 
ascended  a  stairway  with  a  walnut  banister.  To  the  left  of  this  was  the 
parlor,  a  room  where  my  aunt's  Mathushek  piano  was.  At  the  windows  were 
lace  curtains  held  back  by  cords  fastened  around  large  glass  knobs.  The 
couch  was  upholstered  in  horsehair,  as  were  some  of  the  chairs.  There  were 
two  mahogany  tables,  one  lyre  shaped.  There  was  a  large  ornate  lamp  with 
a  glazed-glass  shade  on  one  of  these  tables.  There  were  two  paintings  on 
the  wall,  of  country  scenes,  paintings  of  the  sort  which  are  done  by  copyists 
and  can  be  bought  anywhere  for  a  small  price.  There  was  a  wood  stove  of 
Russian  iron,  always  in  a  high  state  of  polish;  and  back  of  it  a  wood  box 
papered  with  wallpaper.  Back  of  the  parlor  was  the  spare  bedroom,  always 
smelling  musty  and  rarely  really  aired.  In  it  was  a  walnut  bedstead  heavily 
built  up  with  quilts  of  my  grandmother's  making.  At  one  side  was  a  stand 
holding  a  bowl  and  pitcher. 

At  the  end  of  the  hallway  was  a  door  leading  to  the  dining  room.  To  the 
right  was  the  living  room  where  my  grandfather  and  grandmother  spent 
nearly  all  of  their  time,  and  where  they  slept.  There  was  a  lounge  in  the 
room  where  my  aunt  Mary  lay  for  those  long  years  of  illness;  and  a  ma- 
hogany bureau.  In  one  corner  was  an  old  mahogany  chest  which  Rebecca 
Wasson  had  brought  from  North  Carolina  to  Illinois,  and  which  she  had 
given  my  grandmother.  On  this  chest  was  a  walnut  case  for  books.  The 
chest  had  two  drawers,  one  used  by  my  grandfather  for  his  awl,  needles,  flax 
and  wax  for  harness  mending.  The  other  drawer  was  my  grandmother's 
where  she  kept  her  daguerreotypes,  and  the  watch  of  a  beloved  son  who  was 
drowned  in  the  Platte  River  in  1862;  besides  sticks  of  cinnamon  and  trinkets 
of  various  sorts.  In  the  east  wall  of  the  room  was  a  huge  fireplace,  in  which 
cordwood  could  be  burned;  and  the  mantel  over  it  had  a  clock  with  weights, 
and  a  bell  which  rang  loudly  when  the  clock  struck.  In  one  corner  was  my 
grandmother's  trunk;  and  in  a  closet  near  by  she  kept  her  shoes  and  dresses, 
her  hats  and  apparel. 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  217 

The  dining  room  was  a  long  room  running  east  and  west  the  full  width  of 
the  house  except  for  a  small  dark  room  at  the  west  end  which  was  used  as 
a  spare  bedroom.  Between  the  dining  room  and  the  separate  building  con- 
taining the  kitchen  and  the  hired  man's  room  there  was  a  long  porch,  with  a 
shelf  against  the  kitchen  wall  where  were  hung  old  gloves,  turkey  wings,  or 
what  not;  and  on  one  end  of  which  was  a  water  tank  supplied  with  ice  in 
summer.  For  my  grandfather  was  one  of  the  few  farmers  about  who  had  an 
icehouse.  Outside  this  porch  was  the  workhouse,  so  called,  where  saws  and 
augers  and  other  tools  were  kept  on  a  workbench,  or  hung  over  it.  This  was 
one  of  my  delights  from  the  time  that  I  could  saw  a  board  or  bore  a  hole, 
when  I  made  windmills  for  myself. 

The  upper  rooms  were  sleeping  chambers,  one  of  them  being  occupied  by 
my  uncle  who  was  nine  years  my  senior.  Back  of  the  chambers  was  a  place 
under  the  roof,  called  the  Dark  Ages,  where  old  trunks  were  stored,  con- 
taining, as  it  turned  out,  many  books  which  became  my  delight  as  the  years 
passed. 

But  my  favorite  room  was  the  living  room,  where  as  a  child  and  long  after 
I  sat  with  my  grandparents  before  the  fireplace:  the  big  burning  logs  cast  a 
light  about  the  room  and  on  the  ceiling.  The  heat  made  sizzling  sounds  in 
the  frozen  apples  which  had  been  brought  from  the  cellar  and  placed  there 
to  thaw  out.  Meanwhile  the  wind  whistled  from  over  the  prairies  and  the 
snow  beat  at  the  windows.  Here  I  listened  to  my  grandmother  tell  about  the 
buffalo  grass  that  overgrew  all  the  country  about  when  she  first  saw  Menard 
County,  and  about  the  days  that  they  lived  in  the  log  house  on  the  lower 
lot  when  my  father  was  a  baby,  and  until  the  new  house  was  built,  that 
being  this  house  just  described.  .  .  . 

Now  the  other  room  of  my  delight  in  this  house  was  the  kitchen,  where  for 
many  months  of  the  year  —  in  autumn  after  the  heat  of  summer,  in  the  cold 
winter,  and  in  the  raw  spring  —  the  long  table  was  kept  set,  spread  with  a 
red  tablecloth  and  full  of  delectable  food  when  we  sat  down  to  eat.  I  loved 
the  fragrance  and  the  taste  of  the  sassafras  tea  which  my  grandmother  made. 
The  kitchen  stove  kept  the  room  warm;  and  it  was  a  great  delight  to  run 
from  my  cold  room  to  this  kitchen,  and  there  find  my  grandmother  laughing 
and  frying  cakes,  or  baking  corn  bread.  Back  of  this  kitchen  was  the  hired 
man's  room;  and  this  functionary  was  always  sitting  by  the  stove  when  the 
meal  was  about  to  be  served,  or  if  he  was  in  his  room  I  could  run  in  there  to 
see  his  treasures,  like  his  harmonica  and  nickel  cigars  perfumed  with  cin- 
namon. 

This  was  the  house  and  these  the  rooms  that  emerged  into  my  imagination 
and  my  comprehension  of  my  world.  It  was  full  of  magic.  And  when  on 
Sundays  we  set  off  from  the  Atterberry  farm  to  have  dinner  with  my  grand- 
parents my  heart  leaped  up,  my  happiness  knew  no  bounds.  All  their  long 
lives,  Uncle  Beth  Vincent  and  Aunt  Minerva  showered  presents  on  me  and 
my  sister;  as  they  had  given  my  uncle  Will  a  great  many  books  wonderfully 
illustrated,  such  as  The  Babes  in  the  Wood,  Grimm's  Fairy  Tales,  besides 


218  The  Arch  of  Experience 

wonderful  tops  and  toys,  field  glasses,  cabinets  of  tools,  and  much  else  that 
delights  a  boy.  There  were  these  things  for  me  to  see;  besides  my  grand- 
mother's trinkets,  her  illustrated  books,  and  the  like.  And  then  there  was 
the  dinner. 

That  long  table  was  filled  with  wonderful  food:  fried  chicken  and  boiled 
ham,  and  mashed  potatoes  and  turnips,  and  watermelon  pickles  and  peach 
pickles,  stuck  with  cloves;  and  in  season  fresh  strawberries  and  cream  or 
blackberries,  and  sponge  or  jelly  cake.  All  this  was  enough  to  fascinate  any 
boy,  particularly  if  his  own  home  was  not  run  on  a  scale  of  such  plenty  and 
variety,  such  order  and  punctuality. 


Father  Tries  to  Make  Mother 

Like  Figures     «*  Clarence  Day  •  i874-i935 


Of  recent  years  we  have  had  a  spate  of  family  reminiscences,  turn- 
ing upon  no  great  revelations  about  famous  people  but  upon  everyday 
household  happenings  which  reveal  the  traits  of  Father  and  Mother, 
Brother  and  Sister  —  the  family  constellation  illustrated.  One  of  the 
best  of  such  books  is  Clarence  Day's  Life  With  Father,  from  which  the 
following  is  a  representative  episode.  A  portrait  of  your  own  father, 
mother,  sister,  brother,  cousin,  uncle,  aunt  could  be  equally  amusing. 

FATHER  WAS  always  trying  to  make  Mother  keep  track  of  the  household 
expenses.  He  was  systematic  by  nature  and  he  had  had  a  sound  business 
training.  He  had  a  full  set  of  account  books  at  home  in  addition  to  those 
in  his  office  —  a  personal  cashbook,  journal,  and  ledger  —  in  which  he 
carefully  made  double  entries.  His  home  ledger  showed  at  a  glance 
exactly  how  much  a  month  or  a  year  his  clothes  or  his  clubs  or  his  cigar 
bills  amounted  to.  Every  item  was  listed.  He  knew  just  how  every  one 
of  his  expenses  compared  with  those  of  former  years,  and  when  he  allowed 
the  figures  to  mount  up  in  one  place,  he  could  bring  them  down  in  another. 
Before  he  got  married,  these  books  had  apparently  given  him  great  satis- 
faction, but  he  said  they  were  never  the  same  after  that.  They  had  sud- 
denly stopped  telling  him  anything.  He  still  knew  what  his  personal  ex- 
penses were,  but  they  were  microscopic  compared  to  his  household  ex- 
penses, and  of  those  he  knew  nothing,  no  details,  only  the  horrible  total. 
His  money  was  flowing  away  in  all  directions  and  he  had  no  record  of  it. 

Reprinted  from  Life  With  Father  by  Clarence  Day,  by  permission  of  Alfred  A.  Knopf, 
Inc.  Copyright,  1934,  1935,  by  Clarence  Day. 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  219 

Every  once  in  so  often  he  tried  to  explain  his  system  to  Mother.  But 
his  stout,  leather-bound  ledgers,  and  his  methodical  ruling  of  lines  in  red 
ink,  and  the  whole  business  of  putting  down  every  little  expense  every 
day,  were  too  much  for  her.  She  didn't  feel  that  women  should  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  accounts,  any  more  than  men  should  have  to  see  that 
the  parlor  was  dusted.  She  had  been  only  a  debutante  when  she  married, 
not  long  out  of  school,  and  though  she  had  been  head  of  her  class,  and 
wrote  well  and  spelled  well,  and  spoke  beautiful  French,  she  had  never 
laid  eyes  on  a  ledger.  Every  time  Father  showed  her  his,  she  was  unsym- 
pathetic. 

Figures  were  so  absorbing  to  Father  that  for  a  long  time  he  couldn't 
believe  Mother  really  disliked  them.  He  hoped  for  years  that  her  lack  of 
interest  was  due  only  to  her  youth  and  that  she  would  outgrow  it.  He 
said  confidently  that  she  would  soon  learn  to  keep  books.  It  was  simple. 
Meanwhile,  if  she  would  just  make  a  memorandum  for  him  of  whatever 
she  spent,  he  would  enter  it  himself  in  the  accounts  until  he  could  trust 
her  to  do  it. 

That  day  never  arrived. 

Father  knew  where  some  of  the  money  went,  for  part  of  the  expenses 
were  charged.  But  this  was  a  poor  consolation.  Although  the  household 
bills  gave  him  plenty  of  data  which  he  could  sit  and  stare  at,  in  horror,  he 
said  that  many  of  the  details  were  not  clear  to  him,  and  most  of  the  rest 
were  incredible. 

He  tried  to  go  over  the  bills  regularly  with  Mother,  as  well  as  he  could, 
demanding  information  about  items  which  he  did  not  understand.  But 
every  now  and  then  there  were  items  which  she  didn't  understand,  either. 
She  said  she  wasn't  sure  they  were  mistakes,  but  she  couldn't  remember 
about  them.  Her  mind  was  a  blank.  She  behaved  as  though  the  bill  were 
a  total  stranger  to  her. 

This  was  one  of  the  features  that  annoyed  Father  most. 

Mother  didn't  like  these  sessions  a  bit.  She  told  us  she  hated  bills,  any- 
how. When  they  were  larger  than  she  expected,  she  felt  guilty  and  hardly 
dared  to  let  Father  see  them.  When  some  of  them  seemed  small  to  her, 
she  felt  happy,  but  not  for  long,  because  they  never  seemed  small  to 
Father.  And  when  she  spotted  an  error  —  when  she  found,  for  instance, 
that  Tyson,  the  butcher,  had  charged  too  much  for  a  broiler  —  she  had 
to  fly  around  to  the  shop  to  have  it  corrected,  and  argue  it  out,  and  go 
through  a  disagreeable  experience,  and  then  when  she  told  Father  how 
hard  she  had  worked  he  took  it  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  she  indignantly 
found  that  she  never  got  any  credit  for  it. 

Sometimes  I  had  to  do  this  kind  of  thing,  too.  There  was  a  man  named 
Flannagan  over  on  Sixth  Avenue  who  supplied  us  with  newspapers,  and 
I  used  to  be  sent  to  rebuke  him  when  he  overcharged.  Father  said  Flan- 
nagan had  no  head  for  figures.  After  checking  up  the  addition  and  re- 
computing the  individual  items,  he  would  generally  discover  that  the 


220  The  Arch  of  Experience 

bill  was  anywhere  from  three  to  fourteen  cents  out,  He  then  sent  for  me, 
handed  me  the  correct  amount  of  change  and  the  bill,  and  told  me  to 
go  over  to  see  Flannagan  the  next  day,  after  school,  and  warn  him  that 
we  wouldn't  stand  it. 

I  got  used  to  this  after  a  while,  but  the  first  time  I  went  I  was  frightened. 
Flannagan  was  a  large  man  who  looked  like  a  barkeeper  and  whose  face 
was  tough  and  belligerent.  When  I  marched  into  his  dark  little  shop  and 
shakily  attempted  to  warn  him  that  we  wouldn't  stand  it,  he  leaned  over 
the  counter,  stared  down  at  me,  and  said  loudly,  "Har?" 

"Excuse  me,  Mr.  Flannagan/'  I  repeated,  "here  is  your  bill  but  it's 
wrong." 

"HarP" 

"It  seems  to  be  just  a  little  wrong,  sir.  Eight  cents  too  much  for  the  Sun." 

Flannagan  snatched  the  bill  from  me  and  the  money,  and  went  to  his 
desk.  After  working  over  it  with  a  thick  pencil,  and  smudging  the  bill 
all  up,  front  and  back,  he  snarled  to  himself,  and  receipted  it  the  way 
Father  wished.  Then  he  chucked  it  disdainfully  on  the  counter.  I  picked 
it  up  and  got  out. 

"Confound  it  all,"  Father  said  when  he  got  it,  "don't  muss  my  bills  up  so." 

"It  was  Mr.  Flannagan,  Father." 

"Well,  tell  him  he  must  learn  to  be  tidy." 

"Yes,  sir,"  I  said,  hopelessly. 

I  liked  figures  myself,  just  as  Father  did,  and  I  thought  it  was  queer 
Mother  didn't.  She  was  as  quick  at  them  as  anybody,  yet  she  didn't  get 
any  fun  out  of  writing  them  down  and  adding  them  up.  I  liked  the  prob- 
lems in  my  school  arithmetic,  and  I  deeply  admired  Father's  account 
books.  I  didn't  dare  tell  him  this,  somehow.  He  never  offered  to  let  me 
examine  those  big,  handsome  books.  He  kept  them  locked  up  in  a  desk 
he  had,  down  in  the  front  basement. 

If  I  showed  Father  one  of  my  arithmetic  lessons,  he  was  interested  — 
he  got  up  from  his  chair  and  put  down  his  newspaper  and  sat  at  the  dining- 
room  table  with  a  pencil  and  paper,  to  see  how  well  I  had  done.  But 
Mother  didn't  want  to  go  into  such  matters. 

Every  month  when  the  bills  came  in,  there  was  trouble.  Mother  seemed 
to  have  no  great  extravagances.  But  she  loved  pretty  things.  She  had  a 
passion  for  china,  for  instance.  She  saw  hundreds  of  beautiful  cups  and 
saucers  that  it  was  hard  to  walk  away  from  and  leave.  She  knew  she 
couldn't  buy  them,  and  mustn't,  but  every  so  often  she  did.  No  one  pur- 
chase seemed  large  by  itself,  but  they  kept  mounting  up,  and  Father 
declared  that  she  bought  more  china  than  the  Windsor  Hotel. 

Father  couldn't  see  why  charge  accounts  should  be  a  temptation  to 
Mother.  They  were  no  temptation  to  him.  He  knew  that  the  bill  would 
arrive  on  the  first  of  the  month  and  that  in  a  few  days  he  would  pay  it. 
He  said  he  had  supposed  that  Mother  would  have  the  same  feelings  that 
he  had  about  this. 

But  Mother  was  one  of  those  persons  for  whom  charge  accounts  were 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  221 

invented.  When  she  bought  something  and  charged  it,  the  first  of  the  next 
month  seemed  far  away,  and  she  hoped  that  perhaps  Father  wouldn't 
mind  —  he  might  be  nice  about  it  for  once.  Her  desire  for  the  thing  was 
strong  at  that  moment,  the  penalty  was  remote,  and  she  fell. 

She  was  a  different  woman  entirely  when  she  had  to  pay  cash.  It  was 
hard  to  get  cash  out  of  Father,  she  never  got  much  at  one  time,  and  as 
she  looked  in  her  pocketbook  she  could  see  her  precious  little  hoard  dwin- 
dling. She  fingered  a  purchase  and  thought  twice  about  it  before  she 
could  bear  to  part  with  the  money.  But  shopping  on  a  charge  account  was 
fun.  She  tried  not  to  let  herself  be  tempted,  but  of  course  she  was,  all 
the  time,  and  after  she  had  conscientiously  resisted  nine  lovely  tempta- 
tions, it  didn't  seem  really  wicked  to  yield  to  the  tenth. 

Father  did  his  level  best  to  take  all  the  fun  out  of  it  for  her.  Once  every 
month  regularly  he  held  court  and  sat  as  a  judge,  and  required  her  to  ex- 
plain her  crimes  and  misdemeanors.  When  she  cried,  or  showed  that  she 
was  hurt,  it  appeared  that  Father,  too,  felt  hurt  and  worried.  He  said 
again  and  again  at  the  top  of  his  voice  that  he  wished  to  be  reasonable 
but  that  he  couldn't  afford  to  spend  money  that  way,  and  that  they  would 
have  to  do  better. 

Once  in  a  while  when  Father  got  low  in  his  mind  and  said  that  he  was 
discouraged,  Mother  felt  so  sorry  that  she  tried  hard  to  keep  count  of  the 
cash  for  him.  She  put  down  all  sorts  of  little  expenses,  on  backs  of  en- 
velopes or  on  half-sheets  of  letter  paper  of  different  sizes,  and  she  gave 
these  to  Father  with  many  interlineations  and  much  scratching  out  of  other 
memoranda,  and  with  mystifying  omissions.  He  would  pore  over  them, 
calling  out  to  her  to  tell  him  what  this  was,  or  that,  in  a  vain  attempt  to 
bring  order  out  of  this  feminine  chaos. 

Mother  could  sometimes,  though  not  very  often,  be  managed  by  praise, 
but  criticism  made  her  rebellious,  and  after  a  dose  of  it  she  wouldn't  put 
down  any  figures  at  all  for  a  while.  She  had  to  do  the  mending  and  market- 
ing and  take  care  of  the  children,  and  she  told  Father  she  had  no  time 
to  learn  to  be  a  bookkeeper  too.  What  was  the  use  of  keeping  track  of 
anything  that  was  over  and  done  with?  She  said  that  wasn't  her  way  of 
doing  things. 

"Well,"  Father  said  patiently,  "let's  get  at  the  bottom  of  this,  now,  and 
work  out  some  solution.  What  is  your  way  of  doing  things?  Tell  me." 

Mother  said  firmly  that  her  way  was  to  do  the  very  best  she  could  to 
keep  down  expenses,  and  that  all  her  friends  thought  she  did  wonderfully, 
and  the  Wards  spent  twice  as  much. 

Father  said,  "Damn  the  Wards!  They  don't  have  to  work  for  it.  I  don't 
wish  to  be  told  what  they  spend,  or  how  they  throw  money  around." 

Mother  said,  "Oh,  Clare,  how  can  you!  They  don't.  They  just  like  to 
have  things  go  nicely,  and  live  in  a  comfortable  way,  and  I  thought  you 
were  so  fond  of  Cousin  Mary.  You  know  very  well  she  is  lovely,  and  she 
gave  the  baby  a  cup." 

Father  declared  that  he  might  be  fond  of  Cousin  Mary  without  wanting 


222  The  Arch  of  Experience 

to  hear  so  damned  much  about  her.  He  said  she  cropped  up  every  minute. 

"You  talk  of  your  own  family  enough,"  Mother  answered. 

Father  felt  this  was  very  unjust.  When  he  talked  of  his  own  family  he 
criticized  them,  and  as  severely  as  he  knew  how.  He  held  tightly  onto 
himself  in  an  effort  to  keep  to  the  subject.  He  said  that  the  point  he  was 
trying  to  make  was  that  Cousin  Mary's  ways  were  not  his  ways,  and  that 
consequently  there  was  no  use  whatever  discussing  them  with  him. 

Mother  said,  "Goodness  knows  /  don't  want  to  discuss  things,  it's  always 
you  who  are  doing  it,  and  if  I  can't  even  speak  of  Cousin  Mary  —  " 

"You  can,  you  can  speak  of  her  all  you  want  to,"  Father  hotly  protested. 
"But  I  won't  have  Cousin  Mary  or  anyone  else  dictating  to  me  how  to  run 
things." 

"I  didn't  say  a  word  about  her  dictating,  Clare.   She  isn't  that  kind." 

"I  don't  know  what  you  said,  now,"  Father  replied.  "You  never  stick 
to  the  point.  But  you  implied  in  some  way  that  Cousin  Mary  —  " 

"Oh,  Clare,  please!  I  didn't!  And  I  can't  bear  to  have  you  talk  so  harshly 
of  her  when  she  admires  you  so." 

Something  like  this  happened  to  every  financial  conversation  they  had. 
Father  did  his  best  to  confine  the  discussion  to  the  question  at  issue,  but 
somehow,  no  matter  how  calmly  he  started,  he  soon  got  exasperated  and 
went  galloping  fiercely  off  in  any  direction  Mother's  mind  happened  to 
take;  and  in  the  middle  of  it  one  of  the  babies  would  cry  and  Mother 
would  have  to  go  off  to  see  what  was  wrong,  or  she  would  have  to  run 
down  to  leave  word  for  Mrs.  Tobin,  the  washerwoman,  to  do  Father's 
shirts  differently,  and  when  Father  complained  Mother  reminded  him  re- 
proachfully that  she  had  to  keep  house. 

Father  was  baffled  by  these  tactics.  But  every  time  he  went  back  down 
to  the  basement  and  ruled  neat  lines  in  his  ledgers,  he  made  up  his  mind 
all  over  again  that  he  wouldn't  give  up. 


Good-bye,  Little  Sister    «* 

Crary  JVtoore 


This  story  takes  as  its  materials  the  old  freshman-theme  favorite, 
"My  First  Date,"  but  it  makes  something  more  than  an  amusing  or 
embarrassing  episode  of  that  universal  experience.  For  the  older  sister 
who  tells  the  story  sees  it  as  both  an  end  and  a  beginning  for  her  Little 
Sister. 

Reprinted  by  permission  of  the  author.    Copyright,  1952,  by  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
Company,  Boston,  Mass. 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  223 


THE  BIGGEST  and  best  coming-out  parties  in  New  York  are  in  Christmas 
Vacation.  There's  just  nothing  like  it,  I  think:  down  Park  Avenue  in  a  taxi 
at  seven  o'clock,  with  the  lights  flashing  green,  red,  green,  and  the  white 
path  of  Christmas  trees  down  the  middle,  dazzling  in  the  dark.  Your 
stockings  make  a  sleek  little  hiss  as  you  cross  your  knees  under  all  that 
tulle;  you  can  smell  your  own  perfume;  and  the  Sophomore  beside  you 
seems  wonderfully  dark  and  dangerous.  At  home,  the  closets  bloom  with 
pink  and  white  crinolines  (Don't  touch  it,  Betsy!  It's  got  to  be  fresh  for 
the  Junior  Assembly!);  flowers  arrive;  and  the  phone  rings  all  the  time. 
Sometimes  a  photographer's  velvet  voice  inquires  if  you'd  like  a  nice 
cabinet-size  portrait,  real  Hollywood  type;  or  a  distraught  hostess  wants 
to  speak  to  your  mother  about  an  extra  boy  or  the  table  will  be  ruined: 
"Can't  you  ask  Betsy?  She  knows  so  many  boys!" 

I  was  coming  out,  and  adoring  it,  when  my  little  sister  Emily  went  to 
her  first  big  dance.  The  subdeb  parties  are  terribly  important  if  you  want 
to  have  a  good  time  in  your  big  year.  We  had  put  off  the  dreadful  day 
until  she  was  fifteen.  Emily  was  skinny  and  romantic,  and  in  the  summer 
she  didn't  sail  much  or  play  tennis;  she  goated,  so  we  were  awfully  wor- 
ried about  her  social  career.  She  had  a  huge  brown  billy  goat  she  called 
Master  of  Ballantrae,  and  Daddy  called  Auld  Reekie.  When  he  was  stub- 
born, which  was  always,  she  towed  him  around  by  his  grubby  beard,  so 
she  was  usually  pretty  gamy  herself.  She  saved  up  to  buy  him  a  wife 
(the  family  couldn't  say  no);  but  he  abominated  the  creature,  whose  name 
was  Flora  Macdonald,  and  Emily  couldn't  seem  to  comfort  her. 

It's  only  reasonable  to  be  afraid  of  your  first  dance.  Even  the  naturals, 
the  little  pussycat  blondes,  are  scared  to  death,  and  I  told  Emily  so.  But, 
like  poor  old  Flora,  she  bleated  and  skittered  around;  she  said  her  dress 
showed  all  her  bones.  It  didn't;  Mother  chose  it  to  hide  them.  Then  she 
got  fractious,  and  said  only  idiots  wore  pink. 

On  the  day  before  the  party  she  threw  up  twice  and  got  a  rash  where 
it  showed.  Two  weeks  earlier,  she  had  told  me,  as  a  dark  secret,  that  she 
was  terrified  of  meeting  Amory  Standish,  who  was  the  idol  of  the  Tenth 
Class.  He'd  almost  been  fired  from  Exeter  for  smoking,  and  Emily  was 
sure  he  was  a  rip  in  every  respect.  I  thought  it  was  immensely  sweet  of 
her  to  tell  Mother  that  there  was  no  one  she'd  rather  go  to  the  party  with. 
You're  supposed  to  ask  the  boys  to  go  with  you,  rather  than  the  other 
way  round;  they  look  after  you,  and  see  that  their  friends  cut  in  on  you; 
so  presentable,  well-behaved  ones  are  in  tremendous  demand.  Unless 
you're  lucky  enough  to  have  a  real  beau,  your  unfortunate  mother  has  to 
go  to  one  of  those  Witches'  Sabbaths  they  call  Patronesses'  Meetings,  and 
see  if  any  of  her  old  schoolmates  has  an  appropriate  son.  Usually,  the  son 
doesn't  prove  too  fascinating:  if  no  spots,  then  no  chin. 

Ma  had  come  back  swollen  with  pride  about  having  collared  Amory, 


224  The  Arch  of  Experience 

who  was  well  and  favorably  known  to  the  mother-cabal.  Emily  thanked 
her  with  real  grace,  ran  back  to  our  room,  gave  me  a  tragic  glare,  and 
wept  bitterly.  I  told  her  that  most  fatal  charmers  absolutely  lived  on 
flattery,  and  that  all  she  need  do  would  be  to  lard  Amory  with  compli- 
ments. But  Emily,  who'd  never  said  an  artificial  thing  in  her  life,  looked 
at  me  with  glazed  red  eyes  as  though  I'd  recommended  speaking  Swahili, 
and  I  almost  gave  her  up,  then  and  there. 

The  Awful  Evening  finally  came  for  her,  and  with  it  Amory.  I  found  him 
delightful:  no  spots,  plenty  of  chin,  tall  without  that  celery  look,  and  a 
merry  black  eye.  Even  dimples.  Emily  was  having  a  frenzied  time  with 
her  stockings,  so  Daddy  asked  Amory,  in  a  man-to-man  voice,  if  he 
wouldn't  have  a  little  sherry  in  the  library.  My  father  has  responded 
splendidly  to  training;  but  I  saw  that  Ma  was  about  to  get  wayward  and 
panicky,  perhaps  to  ask  Amory  if  he  played  on  any  teams,  so  I  dragged 
her  upstairs  to  Emily.  "Look,  Em,"  I  said,  "he's  brought  you  a  terrific 
corsage.  No  forget-me-nots." 

Emily  stared  listlessly  at  her  two  camellias.  "Is  he  cute?"  she  said  in  a 
graveyard  voice. 

"Awfully." 

"Oh  God." 

"Not  like  that,  Em.   In  a  sweet  way.   He's  awfully  nice  too." 

'Then  hell  be  sorry  for  me,"  and  she  nearly  wept.  I  saw  the  time  had 
come  for  shock  treatment,  so  I  said  Amory  had  better  things  to  be  sorry 
for,  and  not  to  make  her  eyes  repulsive.  I  bustled  her  into  her  pink  dress, 
stuffed  her  silver-mesh  bag  into  one  hand,  her  white  gloves  into  the  other, 
and  dabbed  her  with  my  perfume.  I  told  her  it  was  sure-fire. 

Mother  gave  her  an  apprehensive  kiss  and  said,  "If  you  don't  like  it  by 
eleven  o'clock,  darling,  I'll  be  up  in  the  Patronesses'  Gallery." 

Emily  said  in  a  quavering  voice  that  she  knew  she'd  have  a  good  time 
in  such  a  nice  dress.  I  wanted  to  kiss  her  too,  for  that,  but  thought  it 
might  set  her  off. 

"Now,  Em,"  I  said,  "one  last  thing.  Ma  and  I'll  go  out;  and  you  stand 
by  the  mirror  and  take  a  darn  good  look  and  think  how  pretty  you  are. 
Because  you  are,  and  all  you  have  to  do  is  to  believe  it." 

We  started  downstairs,  both  frozen  with  nerves.  Mother  stopped  me  on 
the  landing  and  said  she  was  positively  queasy.  "It  was  different  with  you, 
Bets,  you  were  just  automatic.  .  .  .  Damn  those  spoiled  little  boys,"  she 
said,  "I  feel  as  though  I  were  throwing  her  to  the  lions." 

"If  she'd  only  realize  how  cunning  she  looked."  I  heard  Daddy  and 
Amory  laughing  in  the  library,  which  sounded  auspicious.  "You  were 
wonderful  to  get  Amory,  Ma,"  I  said.  "He's  so  cheerful,  he'll  end  up  by 
making  her  think  it's  fun." 

"Do  you  suppose  he  has  a  hip  flask?" 

I  reminded  her,  gently,  that  Prohibition  was  over  before  Amory  was 
born;  and  we  went  on  downstairs.  Emily  finally  appeared;  I  hoped  she'd 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  225 

taken  a  good  long  look.  You  can  hypnotize  yourself  into  feeling  a  belle; 
then  you  often  are  one.  She  seemed  stiff  and  blushful,  but  she  really  did 
look  very  pretty.  I  thought  her  dark  oval  face  had  infinitely  more  distinc- 
tion than  the  little  pink-china  dolls',  whose  necks  I  would  gladly  have 
wrung. 

They  said  how-do-you-do,  and  Amory  put  on  her  white  rabbit  cape 
with  a  practiced  air.  She  was  paralyzed  with  shyness;  even  her  voice  was 
hoarse.  Amory  did  a  charming  thing:  looked  straight  at  Mother,  sparing 
Emily,  and  said,  "We're  going  to  a  terrific  party,  Mrs.  Crane.  All  the  men 
from  my  dorm'll  be  there.  I  just  hope  I  get  to  dance  with  Emily  even 
once."  From  the  way  he  shook  hands  with  Daddy,  I  gathered  that  he'd 
just  been  given  the  usual  five  dollars,  for  after  the  party.  There  was 
manly  understanding  in  that  handshake,  and  a  good  deal  of  reassurance. 
I  thought  of  Two  Strong  Men  meeting  Face  to  Face.  Emily  gave  us  a 
last  nervous  glance,  and  preceded  him  out  the  door. 

Mrs.  Standish  had  sent  along  her  elegant  town  car,  so  they  didn't  have 
to  hunt  taxis  in  the  snow.  I  hoped  arriving  in  such  style  would  reinforce 
Em's  confidence  at  least  a  little,  and  that  Amory 's  good  manners  would 
help. 


I  knew  everything  was  all  right,  as  soon  as  I  woke  up,  early  next  morn- 
ing. The  shades  were  drawn,  but  enough  chilly  snow-light  came  in  so  that 
I  could  see  the  pink  dress,  thrown  down  inside-out,  and  a  fine  abandoned 
tangle  of  silver  slippers,  underwear,  and  stockings  on  the  floor.  If  she'd 
been  a  wallflower,  she  would  have  hung  everything  up  with  a  sad  tidiness 
and  made  dogged,  don't-care  noises  going  to  bed.  I  had  slept  right  through 
her  return.  Then  I  saw  her  camellias,  brown  and  messy,  placed  tenderly 
by  her  pillow,  and  that  really  surprised  me.  All  I  could  see  of  Em  was 
her  tangle  of  long  brown  hair.  She  made  such  a  small  ridge  under  the 
blue  quilt. 

I  dozed  off  again  —  it  had  been  my  first  full  night's  sleep  that  week  — 
and  when  I  woke  up,  there  was  a  sunny  square  on  the  carpet.  I  could  hear 
a  faint  slithering  and  chinking  from  the  distant  traffic  on  Park,  and  Emily 
seemed  to  be  stirring.  I  mumbled,  as  though  still  asleep,  and  turned  over 
to  watch  her  through  my  eyelashes. 

I  nearly  died  of  shock.  Her  skinny,  childish  arms  embraced  the  pillow, 
and  her  cheek  was  laid  on  it  delicately,  instead  of  being  rammed  in.  The 
upper  half  of  her  face  was  like  a  musing  angel's:  eyebrows  exquisitely 
raised,  black  lashes  sweeping  her  cheeks.  But  her  mouth  was  curved  into 
a  tiny,  knowing  smile.  And,  as  I  watched,  she  fluttered  her  eyelids  and 
whispered,  "Oh,  thank  you,  no;  I  rarely  smoke."  Then  she  let  go  the 
pillow,  turned  luxuriously  onto  her  back,  raised  her  hands  with  a  swanlike 
gesture,  and  contemplated  her  pale  pink  nails. 

Enchanted  and  amazed,  I  watched,  and  didn't  say  a  word.  After  about 


226  The  Arch  of  Experience 

five  minutes  with  her  fingernails,  she  rose  gracefully  from  her  bed  and 
stood,  in  flannel  pajamas,  looking  down  at  the  faded  camellias.  She  picked 
them  up,  gave  them  a  farewell  glance,  and  dropped  them  nonchalantly 
in  the  wastebasket  by  the  dressing  table.  Then  she  took  the  stopper  from 
my  "sure-fire"  perfume.  It  was  a  sacred  bottle,  given  me  by  my  then  best 
beau,  who  couldn't  bear  to  wait  until  Christmas.  She  waved  it  dreamily  in 
the  air,  and  walked  a  step  or  two  forward.  For  a  moment,  I  was  mystified 
by  that  maneuver,  until  I  realized  that  some  precocious  Grottie  might 
have  said  something  suave  about  a  cloud  of  fragrance.  Showy  boys,  I 
thought,  a  little  annoyed  because  she  didn't  put  the  stopper  back  in  tight. 

Emily  walked,  barefoot  and  on  tiptoe,  into  the  square  of  sun,  stretched 
this  way  and  that,  and  closed  the  window.  She  raised  the  shades,  flooding 
the  room  with  sunlight,  and  gazed  benignly  down  into  our  yard.  It  took 
her  several  minutes  to  account  for  one  bare  ailanthus  tree  (shimmering 
prettily  with  ice),  an  awning  frame,  and  a  couple  of  overturned  flower 
pots.  Then  she  spun  slowly  toward  the  long  mirror  (in  the  brilliant  re- 
flected light,  I  could  see  through  the  blue  flannel  to  her  shadowy  little 
bones)  and  posed,  hip-shot,  like  a  model.  She  ran  a  tender,  wondering 
finger  along  her  jawline  (which  was  sharp  as  a  terrier's  in  those  days), 
and  I  thought,  One  night  that  shook  the  world.  The  whole  thing  came  to 
a  fine  climax  as  she  turned  away  from  the  mirror.  Glancing  lightly  back 
over  her  shoulder,  she  said,  in  crystal  accents,  "Oh,  Amo.  You  utter  child." 

I  decided,  almost  embarrassed,  that  it  was  about  time  to  wake  up.  My 
groans  and  yawns  must  have  been  convincing,  because,  quite  without 
self-consciousness,  the  Terrestrial  Venus  disappeared.  She  even  became 
pigeon-toed  again.  I  said  the  expected  things:  "Hi,  Em.  Was  it  okay? 
Did  you  make  out  all  right?" 

Emily  asked,  in  a  social  voice,  very  deliberately,  if  she'd  wakened  me 
last  night  when  she  came  in.  I  said  no,  also  in  a  social  voice. 

It  was  then,  and  only  then,  that  she  told  me  about  her  lovely  time. 
The  music,  the  compliments,  the  balloons  on  the  ceiling.  Good-bye,  goats, 
I  thought,  a  trifle  sadly;  good-bye,  little  sister.  After  she'd  gone  through 
her  impressive  list  of  partners,  gloating  just  a  bit;  after  she'd  said  exactly 
what  there  was  for  supper  (Rome  wasn't  built  overnight),  I  said,  "I  bet 
Amory  calls  up  today." 

Emily  dropped  her  eyelashes.  "I  bet  so  too,"  she  said,  and  we  both 
burst  out  laughing. 


Brother  Death 

Sherwood  Anderson  •  i876—i94i 


The  imaginative  writer  often  arrives  by  sympathetic  observation 
and  "intuition"  at  understandings  of  experience  that  coincide  with  the 
logical  or  experimental  formulations  of  the  social  scientist.  This  story 
by  Sherwood  Anderson  follows  very  closely  the  theory  of  the  family 
constellation  set  forth  by  Adler,  but  its  terms  are  quite  different. 

THERE  WERE  the  two  oak  stumps,  knee  high  to  a  not-too-tall  man  and  cut 
quite  squarely  across.  They  became  to  the  two  children  objects  of  wonder. 
They  had  seen  the  two  trees  cut  but  had  run  away  just  as  the  trees  fell. 
They  hadn't  thought  of  the  two  stumps,  to  be  left  standing  there;  hadn't 
even  looked  at  them.  Afterwards  Ted  said  to  his  sister  Mary,  speaking  of 
the  stumps:  "I  wonder  if  they  bled,  like  legs,  when  a  surgeon  cuts  a  man's 
leg  off."  He  had  been  hearing  war  stories.  A  man  came  to  the  farm  one 
day  to  visit  one  of  the  farm-hands,  a  man  who  had  been  in  the  World 
War  and  lost  an  arm.  He  stood  in  one  of  the  barns  talking.  When  Ted 
said  that  Mary  spoke  up  at  once.  She  hadn't  been  lucky  enough  to  be  at 
the  barn  when  the  one-armed  man  was  there  talking,  and  was  jealous. 
"Why  not  a  woman  or  a  girl's  leg?"  she  said,  but  Ted  said  the  idea  was 
silly.  "Women  and  girls  don't  get  their  legs  and  arms  cut  off,"  he  declared. 
"Why  not?  I'd  just  like  to  know  why  not?"  Mary  kept  saying. 

It  would  have  been  something  if  they  had  stayed,  that  day  the  trees 
were  cut.  "We  might  have  gone  and  touched  the  places,"  Ted  said. 
He  meant  the  stumps.  Would  they  have  been  warm?  Would  they  have 
bled?  They  did  go  and  touch  the  places  afterwards,  but  it  was  a  cold 
^ay  and  the  stumps  were  cold.  Ted  stuck  to  his  point  that  only  men's 
arms  and  legs  were  cut  off,  but  Mary  thought  of  automobile  accidents. 
"You  can't  think  just  of  wars.  There  might  be  an  automobile  accident," 
she  declared,  but  Ted  wouldn't  be  convinced. 

They  were  both  children,  but  something  had  made  them  both  in  an 
odd  way  old.  Mary  was  fourteen  and  Ted  eleven,  but  Ted  wasn't  strong 
and  that  rather  evened  things  up.  They  were  the  children  of  a  well-to-do 
Virginia  farmer  named  John  Grey  in  the  Blue  Ridge  country  in  Southwest- 
ern Virginia.  There  was  a  wide  valley  called  the  "Rich  Valley"  with  a 
railroad  and  a  small  river  running  through  it  and  high  mountains  in  sight, 
to  the  north  and  south.  Ted  had  some  kind  of  a  heart  disease,  a  lesion, 
something  of  the  sort,  the  result  of  a  severe  attack  of  diphtheria  when  he 

Sherwood  Anderson,  Death  in  the  Woods.  Copyright,  1926,  by  Eleanor  Anderson.  Re- 
printed by  permission  of  Harold  Ober  Associates. 

227 


228  The  Arch  of  Experience 

was  a  child  of  eight.  He  was  thin  and  not  strong  but  curiously  alive.  The 
doctor  said  he  might  die  at  any  moment,  might  just  drop  down  dead. 
The  fact  had  drawn  him  peculiarly  close  to  his  sister  Mary.  It  had  awakened 
a  strong  and  determined  maternalism  in  her. 

The  whole  family,  the  neighbors  on  neighboring  farms  in  the  valley, 
and  even  the  other  children  at  the  schoolhouse  where  they  went  to  school 
recognized  something  as  existing  between  the  two  children.  "Look  at 
them  going  along  there,"  people  said.  "They  do  seem  to  have  good  times 
together,  but  they  are  so  serious.  For  such  young  children  they  are  too 
serious.  Still,  I  suppose,  under  the  circumstances,  it's  natural."  Of  course, 
everyone  knew  about  Ted.  It  had  done  something  to  Mary.  At  fourteen 
she  was  both  a  child  and  a  grown  woman.  The  woman  side  of  her  kept 
popping  out  at  unexpected  moments. 

She  had  sensed  something  concerning  her  brother  Ted.  It  was  because 
he  was  as  he  was,  having  that  kind  of  a  heart,  a  heart  likely  at  any  moment 
to  stop  beating,  leaving  him  dead,  cut  down  like  a  young  tree.  The  others 
in  the  Grey  family,  that  is  to  say,  the  older  ones,  the  mother  and  father 
and  an  older  brother,  Don,  who  was  eighteen  now,  recognized  something 
as  belonging  to  the  two  children,  being,  as  it  were,  between  them,  but  the 
recognition  wasn't  very  definite.  People  in  your  own  family  are  likely  at 
any  moment  to  do  strange,  sometimes  hurtful  things  to  you.  You  have  to 
watch  them,  Ted  and  Mary  had  both  found  that  out. 

The  brother  Don  was  like  the  father,  already  at  eighteen  almost  a  grown 
man.  He  was  that  sort,  the  kind  people  speak  of,  saying:  "He's  a  good 
man.  He'll  make  a  good  solid  dependable  man."  The  father,  when  he 
was  a  young  man,  never  drank,  never  went  chasing  the  girls,  was  never 
wild.  There  had  been  enough  wild  young  ones  in  the  Rich  Valley  when  he 
was  a  lad.  Some  of  them  had  inherited  big  farms  and  had  lost  them, 
gambling,  drinking,  fooling  with  fast  horses  and  chasing  after  the  women. 
It  had  been  almost  a  Virginia  tradition,  but  John  Grey  was  a  land  man. 
All  the  Greys  were.  There  were  other  large  cattle  farms  owned  by  Greys 
up  and  down  the  valley. 

John  Grey,  everyone  said,  was  a  natural  cattle  man.  He  knew  beef 
cattle,  of  the  big  so-called  export  type,  how  to  pick  and  feed  them  to  make 
beef.  He  knew  how  and  where  to  get  the  right  kind  of  young  stock  to 
turn  into  his  fields.  It  was  the  blue-grass  country.  Big  beef  cattle  went 
directly  off  the  pastures  to  market.  The  Grey  farm  contained  over  twelve 
hundred  acres,  most  of  it  in  blue-grass. 

The  father  was  a  land  man,  land  hungry.  He  had  begun,  as  a  cattle 
farmer,  with  a  small  place,  inherited  from  his  father,  some  two  hundred 
acres,  lying  next  to  what  was  then  the  big  Aspinwahl  place  and,  after 
he  began,  he  never  stopped  getting  more  land.  He  kept  cutting  in  on  the 
Aspinwahls  who  were  a  rather  horsey,  fast  lot.  They  thought  of  them- 
selves as  Virginia  aristocrats,  having,  as  they  weren't  so  modest  about 
pointing  out,  a  family  going  back  and  back,  family  tradition,  guests  always 
being  entertained,  fast  horses  kept,  money  being  bet  on  fast  horses.  John 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  229 

Grey  getting  their  land,  now  twenty  acres,  then  thirty,  then  fifty,  until 
at  last  he  got  the  old  Aspinwahl  house,  with  one  of  the  Aspinwahl  girls, 
not  a  young  one,  not  one  of  the  best-looking  ones,  as  wife.  The  Aspinwahl 
place  was  down,  by  that  time,  to  less  than  a  hundred  acres,  but  he  went 
on,  year  after  year,  always  being  careful  and  shrewd,  making  every 
penny  count,  never  wasting  a  cent,  adding  and  adding  to  what  was  now 
the  Grey  place.  The  former  Aspinwahl  house  was  a  large  old  brick  house 
with  fireplaces  in  all  the  rooms  and  was  very  comfortable. 

People  wondered  why  Louise  Aspinwahl  had  married  John  Grey,  but 
when  they  were  wondering  they  smiled.  The  Aspinwahl  girls  were  all 
well  educated,  had  all  been  away  to  college,  but  Louise  wasn't  so  pretty. 
She  got  nicer  after  marriage,  suddenly  almost  beautiful.  The  Aspinwahls 
were,  as  everyone  knew,  naturally  sensitive,  really  first  class  but  the  men 
couldn't  hang  onto  land  and  the  Greys  could.  In  all  that  section  of  Vir- 
ginia, people  gave  John  Grey  credit  for  being  what  he  was.  They  respected 
him.  "He's  on  the  level,"  they  said,  "as  honest  as  a  horse.  He  has  cattle 
sense,  that's  it."  He  could  run  his  big  hand  down  over  the  flank  of  a 
steer  and  say,  almost  to  the  pound,  what  he  would  weigh  on  the  scales 
or  he  could  look  at  a  calf  or  a  yearling  and  say,  "He'll  do,"  and  he  would 
do.  A  steer  is  a  steer.  He  isn't  supposed  to  do  anything  but  make 
beef. 

There  was  Don,  the  oldest  son  of  the  Grey  family.  He  was  so  evidently 
destined  to  be  a  Grey,  to  be  another  like  his  father.  He  had  long  been 
a  star  in  the  4H  Club  of  the  Virginia  county  and,  even  as  a  lad  of  nine 
and  ten,  had  won  prizes  at  steer  judging.  At  twelve  he  had  produced, 
no  one  helping  him,  doing  all  the  work  himself,  more  bushels  of  corn  on 
an  acre  of  land  than  any  other  boy  in  the  State. 

It  was  all  a  little  amazing,  even  a  bit  queer  to  Mary  Grey,  being  as  she 
was  a  girl  peculiarly  conscious,  so  old  and  young,  so  aware.  There  was 
Don,  the  older  brother,  big  and  strong  of  body,  like  the  father,  and  there 
was  the  young  brother  Ted.  Ordinarily,  in  the  ordinary  course  of  life,  she 
being  what  she  was  —  female  —  it  would  have  been  quite  natural  and 
right  for  her  to  have  given  her  young  girl's  admiration  to  Don  but  she 
didn't.  For  some  reason,  Don  barely  existed  for  her.  He  was  outside, 
not  in  it,  while  for  her  Ted,  the  seemingly  weak  one  of  the  family,  was 
everything. 

Still  there  Don  was,  so  big  of  body,  so  quiet,  so  apparently  sure  of  him- 
self. The  father  had  begun,  as  a  young  cattle  man,  with  the  two  hundred 
acres,  and  now  he  had  the  twelve  hundred.  What  would  Don  Grey  do 
when  he  started?  Already  he  knew,  although  he  didn't  say  anything,  that 
he  wanted  to  start.  He  wanted  to  run  things,  be  his  own  boss.  His  father 
had  offered  to  send  him  away  to  college,  to  an  agricultural  college,  but  he 
wouldn't  go.  "No.  I  can  learn  more  here,"  he  said. 

Already  there  was  a  contest,  always  kept  under  the  surface,  between  the 
father  and  son.  It  concerned  ways  of  doing  things,  decisions  to  be  made. 
As  yet  the  son  always  surrendered. 


230  The  Arch  of  Experience 

It  is  like  that  in  a  family,  little  isolated  groups  formed  within  the  larger 
group,  jealousies,  concealed  hatreds,  silent  battles  secretly  going  on  — 
among  the  Greys,  Mary  and  Ted,  Don  and  his  father,  the  mother  and  the 
two  younger  children,  Gladys,  a  girl  child  of  six  now,  who  adored  her 
brother  Don,  and  Harry,  a  boy  child  of  two. 

As  for  Mary  and  Ted,  they  lived  within  their  own  world,  but  their  own 
world  had  not  been  established  without  a  struggle.  The  point  was  that 
Ted,  having  the  heart  that  might  at  any  moment  stop  beating,  was  always 
being  treated  tenderly  by  the  others.  Only  Mary  understood  that  —  how 
it  infuriated  and  hurt  him. 

"No,  Ted,  I  wouldn't  do  that." 

"Now,  Ted,  do  be  careful." 

Sometimes  Ted  went  white  and  trembling  with  anger,  Don,  the  father, 
the  mother,  all  keeping  at  him  like  that.  It  didn't  matter  what  he  wanted 
to  do,  learn  to  drive  one  of  the  two  family  cars,  climb  a  tree  to  find  a 
bird's  nest,  run  a  race  with  Mary.  Naturally,  being  on  a  farm,  he  wanted  to 
try  his  hand  at  breaking  a  colt,  beginning  with  him,  getting  a  saddle  on, 
having  it  out  with  him.  "No,  Ted.  You  can't."  He  had  learned  to  swear, 
picking  it  up  from  the  farm-hands  and  from  the  boys  at  the  country 
school.  "Hell!  Goddam!"  he  said  to  Mary.  Only  Mary  understood  how  he 
felt,  and  she  had  not  put  the  matter  very  definitely  into  words,  not  even 
to  herself.  It  was  one  of  the  things  that  made  her  old  when  she  was  so 
young.  It  made  her  stand  aside  from  the  others  of  the  family,  aroused  in 
her  a  curious  determination.  "They  shall  not."  She  caught  herself  saying 
the  words  to  herself.  "They  shall  not." 

"If  he  is  to  have  but  a  few  years  of  life,  they  shall  not  spoil  what  he  is  to 
have.  Why  should  they  make  him  die,  over  and  over,  day  after  day?"  The 
thoughts  in  her  mind  did  not  become  so  definite.  She  had  resentment 
against  the  others.  She  was  like  a  soldier,  standing  guard  over  Ted. 

The  two  children  drew  more  and  more  away,  into  their  own  world  and 
only  once  did  what  Mary  felt  come  to  the  surface.  That  was  with  the 
mother. 

It  was  on  an  early  Summer  day  and  Ted  and  Mary  were  playing  in  the 
rain.  They  were  on  a  side  porch  of  the  house,  where  the  water  came  pour- 
ing down  from  the  eaves.  At  a  corner  of  the  porch  there  was  a  great 
stream,  and  first  Ted  and  then  Mary  dashed  through  it,  returning  to  the 
porch  with  clothes  soaked  and  water  running  in  streams  from  soaked  hair. 
There  was  something  joyous,  the  feel  of  the  cold  water  on  the  body,  under 
clothes,  and  they  were  shrieking  with  laughter  when  the  mother  came  to 
the  door.  She  looked  at  Ted.  There  was  fear  and  anxiety  in  her  voice. 
"Oh,  Ted,  you  know  you  mustn't,  you  mustn't."  Just  that.  All  the  rest  im- 
plied. Nothing  said  to  Mary.  There  it  was.  "Oh,  Ted,  you  mustn't.  You 
mustn't  run  hard,  climb  trees,  ride  horses.  The  least  shock  to  you  may  do 
it."  It  was  the  old  story  again,  and,  of  course,  Ted  understood.  He  went 
white  and  trembled.  Why  couldn't  the  rest  understand  that  was  a  him- 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  231 

dred  times  worse  for  him?  On  that  day,  without  answering  his  mother,  he 
ran  off  the  porch  and  through  the  rain  toward  the  barns.  He  wanted  to  go 
hide  himself  from  everyone.  Mary  knew  how  he  felt. 

She  got  suddenly  very  old  and  very  angry.  The  mother  and  daughter 
stood  looking  at  each  other,  the  woman  nearing  fifty  and  the  child  of 
fourteen.  It  was  getting  everything  in  the  family  reversed.  Mary  felt  that 
but  felt  she  had  to  do  something.  "You  should  have  more  sense,  Mother," 
she  said  seriously.  She  also  had  gone  white.  Her  lips  trembled.  "You 
mustn't  do  it  any  more.  Don't  you  ever  do  it  again." 

"What,  child?"  There  was  astonishment  and  half  anger  in  the  mother's 
voice. 

"Always  making  him  think  of  it,"  Mary  said.  She  wanted  to  cry  but 
didn't. 

The  mother  understood.  There  was  a  queer  tense  moment  before  Mary 
also  walked  off,  toward  the  barns,  in  the  rain.  It  wasn't  all  so  clear.  The 
mother  wanted  to  fly  at  the  child,  perhaps  shake  her  for  daring  to  be  so 
impudent.  A  child  like  that  to  decide  things  —  to  dare  to  reprove  her 
mother.  There  was  so  much  implied  —  even  that  Ted  be  allowed  to  die, 
quickly,  suddenly,  rather  than  that  death,  danger  of  sudden  death,  be 
brought  again  and  again  to  his  attention.  There  were  values  in  life,  im- 
plied by  a  child's  words:  "Life,  what  is  it  worth?  Is  death  the  most  terrible 
thing?"  The  mother  turned  and  went  silently  into  the  house  while  Mary, 
going  to  the  barns,  presently  found  Ted.  He  was  in  an  empty  horse  stall, 
standing  with  his  back  to  the  wall,  staring.  There  were  no  explanations. 
"Well,"  Ted  said  presently,  and,  "Come  on,  Ted,"  Mary  replied.  It  was 
necessary  to  do  something  even  perhaps  more  risky  than  playing  in  the 
rain.  The  rain  was  already  passing.  "Let's  take  off  our  shoes,"  Mary  said. 
Going  barefoot  was  one  of  the  things  forbidden  Ted.  They  took  their 
shoes  off  and,  leaving  them  in  the  barn,  went  into  an  orchard.  There  was 
a  small  creek  below  the  orchard,  a  creek  that  went  down  to  the  river  and 
now  it  would  be  in  flood.  They  went  into  it  and  once  Mary  got  swept  off 
her  feet  so  that  Ted  had  to  pull  her  out.  She  spoke  then.  "I  told  Mother," 
she  said,  looking  serious. 

"What?"  Ted  said.  "Gee,  I  guess  maybe  I  saved  you  from  drowning," 
he  added. 

"Sure  you  did,"  said  Mary.  "I  told  her  to  let  you  alone."  She  grew 
suddenly  fierce.  "They've  all  got  to  — they've  got  to  let  you  alone,"  she 
said. 

There  was  a  bond.  Ted  did  his  share.  He  was  imaginative  and  could 
think  of  plenty  of  risky  things  to  do.  Perhaps  the  mother  spoke  to  the 
father  and  to  Don,  the  older  brother.  There  was  a  new  inclination  in  the 
family  to  keep  hands  off  the  pair,  and  the  fact  seemed  to  give  the  two 
children  new  room  in  life.  Something  seemed  to  open  out.  There  was  a 
little  inner  world  created,  always,  every  day,  being  recreated,  and  in  it 
there  was  a  kind  of  new  security.  It  seemed  to  the  two  children  —  they 


232  The  Arch  of  Experience 

could  not  have  put  their  feelings  into  words  —  that,  being  in  their  own 
created  world,  feeling  a  security  there,  they  could  suddenly  look  out  at 
the  outside  world  and  see,  in  a  new  way,  what  was  going  on  out  there  in 
the  world  that  belonged  also  to  others. 

It  was  a  world  to  be  thought  about,  looked  at,  a  world  of  drama  too,  the 
drama  of  human  relations,  outside  their  own  world,  in  a  family,  on  a  farm, 
in  a  farmhouse.  .  .  .  On  a  farm,  calves  and  yearling  steers  arriving  to  be 
fattened,  great  heavy  steers  going  off  to  market,  colts  being  broken  to 
work  or  to  saddle,  lambs  born  in  the  late  Winter.  The  human  side  of  life 
was  more  difficult,  to  a  child  often  incomprehensible,  but  after  the  speech 
to  the  mother,  on  the  porch  of  the  house  that  day  when  it  rained,  it  seemed 
to  Mary  almost  as  though  she  and  Ted  had  set  up  a  new  family.  Every- 
thing about  the  farm,  the  house  and  the  barns  got  nicer.  There  was  a  new 
freedom.  The  two  children  walked  along  a  country  road,  returning  to  the 
farm  from  school  in  the  late  afternoon.  There  were  other  children  in  the 
road  but  they  managed  to  fall  behind  or  they  got  ahead.  There  were  plans 
made.  "I'm  going  to  be  a  nurse  when  I  grow  up,"  Mary  said.  She  may 
have  remembered  dimly  the  woman  nurse,  from  the  county-seat  town,  who 
had  come  to  stay  in  the  house  when  Ted  was  so  ill.  Ted  said  that  as  soon  as 
he  could  —  it  would  be  when  he  was  younger  yet  than  Don  was  now  —  he 
intended  to  leave  and  go  out  West  ...  far  out,  he  said.  He  wanted  to  be 
a  cowboy  or  a  bronco-buster  or  something,  and,  that  failing,  he  thought  he 
would  be  a  railroad  engineer.  The  railroad  that  went  down  through  the 
Rich  Valley  crossed  a  corner  of  the  Grey  farm,  and,  from  the  road  in  the 
afternoon,  they  could  sometimes  see  trains,  quite  far  away,  the  smoke 
rolling  up.  There  was  a  faint  rumbling  noise,  and,  on  clear  days  they 
could  see  the  flying  piston  rods  of  the  engines. 

As  for  the  two  stumps  in  the  field  near  the  house,  they  were  what  was 
left  of  two  oak  trees.  The  children  had  known  the  trees.  They  were  cut 
one  day  in  the  early  Fall. 

There  was  a  back  porch  to  the  Grey  house  —  the  house  that  had  once 
been  the  seat  of  the  Aspinwahl  family  —  and  from  the  porch  steps  a  path 
led  down  to  a  stone  spring  house.  A  spring  came  out  of  the  ground  just 
there,  and  there  was  a  tiny  stream  that  went  along  the  edge  of  a  field, 
past  two  large  barns  and  out  across  a  meadow  to  a  creek  —  called  a 
"branch"  in  Virginia,  and  the  two  trees  stood  close  together  beyond  the 
spring  house  and  the  fence. 

They  were  lusty  trees,  their  roots  down  in  the  rich,  always  damp  soil, 
and  one  of  them  had  a  great  limb  that  came  down  near  the  ground,  so  that 
Ted  and  Mary  could  climb  into  it  and  out  another  limb  into  its  brother 
tree,  and  in  the  Fall,  when  other  trees,  at  the  front  and  side  of  the  house, 
had  shed  their  leaves,  blood-red  leaves  still  clung  to  the  two  oaks.  They 
were  like  dry  blood  on  gray  days,  but  on  other  days,  when  the  sun  came 
out,  the  trees  flamed  against  the  distant  hills.  The  leaves  clung,  whisper- 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  233 

ing  and  talking  when  the  wind  blew,  so  that  the  trees  themselves  seemed 
carrying  on  a  conversation. 

John  Grey  had  decided  he  would  have  the  trees  cut.  At  first  it  was  not 
a  very  definite  decision.  "I  think  I'll  have  them  cut,"  he  announced. 

"But  why?"  his  wife  asked.  The  trees  meant  a  good  deal  to  her.  They 
had  been  planted,  just  in  that  spot,  by  her  grandfather,  she  said,  having  in 
mind  just  a  certain  effect.  "You  see  how,  in  the  Fall,  when  you  stand  on 
the  back  porch,  they  are  so  nice  against  the  hills."  She  spoke  of  the  trees, 
already  quite  large,  having  been  brought  from  a  distant  woods.  Her 
mother  had  often  spoken  of  it.  The  man,  her  grandfather,  had  a  special 
feeling  for  trees.  "An  Aspinwahl  would  do  that,"  John  Grey  said.  "There 
is  enough  yard,  here  about  the  house,  and  enough  trees.  They  do  not  shade 
the  house  or  the  yard.  An  Aspinwahl  would  go  to  all  that  trouble  for  trees 
and  then  plant  them  where  grass  might  be  growing."  He  had  suddenly 
determined,  a  half-formed  determination  in  him  suddenly  hardening.  He 
had  perhaps  heard  too  much  of  the  Aspinwahls  and  their  ways.  The  con- 
versation regarding  the  trees  took  place  at  the  table,  at  the  noon  hour,  and 
Mary  and  Ted  heard  it  all. 

It  began  at  the  table  and  was  carried  on  afterwards  out  of  doors,  in  the 
yard  back  of  the  house.  The  wife  had  followed  her  husband  out.  He  al- 
ways left  the  table  suddenly  and  silently,  getting  quickly  up  and  going  out 
heavily,  shutting  doors  with  a  bang  as  he  went.  "Don't,  John,"  the  wife 
said,  standing  on  the  porch  and  calling  to  her  husband.  It  was  a  cold 
day  but  the  sun  was  out  and  the  trees  were  like  great  bonfires  against 
gray  distant  fields  and  hills.  The  older  son  of  the  family,  young  Don,  the 
one  so  physically  like  the  father  and  apparently  so  like  him  in  every  other 
way,  had  come  out  of  the  house  with  the  mother,  followed  by  the  two 
children,  Ted  and  Mary,  and  at  first  Don  said  nothing,  but,  when  the 
father  did  not  answer  the  mother's  protest  but  started  toward  the  barn,  he 
also  spoke.  What  he  said  was  obviously  the  determining  thing,  hardening 
the  father. 

To  the  two  other  children  —  they  had  walked  a  little  aside  and  stood 
together  watching  and  listening  —  there  was  something.  There  was  their 
own  child's  world.  "Let  us  alone  and  we'll  let  you  alone."  It  wasn't  as 
definite  as  that.  Most  of  the  definite  thoughts  about  what  happened  in  the 
yard  that  afternoon  came  to  Mary  Grey  long  afterwards,  when  she  was  a 
grown  woman.  At  the  moment  there  was  merely  a  sudden  sharpening  of 
the  feeling  of  isolation,  a  wall  between  herself  and  Ted  and  the  others. 
The  father,  even  then  perhaps,  seen  in  a  new  light,  Don  and  the  mother 
seen  in  a  new  light. 

There  was  something,  a  driving  destructive  thing  in  life,  in  all  relation- 
ships between  people.  All  of  this  felt  dimly  that  day  —  she  always  be- 
lieved both  by  herself  and  Ted  —  but  only  thought  out  long  afterwards, 
after  Ted  was  dead.  There  was  the  farm  her  father  had  won  from  the 
Aspinwahls  —  greater  persistence,  greater  shrewdness.  In  a  family,  little 


234  The  Arch  of  Experience 

remarks  dropped  from  time  to  time,  an  impression  slowly  built  up.  The 
father,  John  Grey,  was  a  successful  man.  He  had  acquired.  He  owned.  He 
was  the  commander,  the  one  having  power  to  do  his  will.  And  the  power 
had  run  out  and  covered,  not  only  other  human  lives,  impulses  in  others, 
wishes,  hungers  in  others  ...  he  himself  might  not  have,  might  not  even 
understand  . . .  but  it  went  far  out  beyond  that.  It  was,  curiously,  the  power 
also  of  life  and  death.  Did  Mary  Grey  think  such  thoughts  at  that  mo- 
ment? .  .  .  She  couldn't  have.  .  .  .  Still  there  was  her  own  peculiar  situation, 
her  relationship  with  her  brother  Ted,  who  was  to  die. 

Ownership  that  gave  curious  rights,  dominances  —  fathers  over  children, 
men  and  women  over  lands,  houses,  factories  in  cities,  fields.  "I  will  have 
the  trees  in  that  orchard  cut.  They  produce  apples  but  not  of  the  right 
sort.  There  is  no  money  in  apples  of  that  sort  any  more." 

"But,  Sir  ...  you  see  ...  look  ...  the  trees  there  against  that  hill,  against 
the  sky." 

"Nonsense.   Sentimentality." 

Confusion. 

It  would  have  been  such  nonsense  to  think  of  the  father  of  Mary  Grey  as 
a  man  without  feeling.  He  had  struggled  hard  all  his  life,  perhaps,  as  a 
young  man,  gone  without  things  wanted,  deeply  hungered  for.  Someone 
has  to  manage  things  in  this  life.  Possessions  mean  power,  the  right  to 
say  "Do  this"  or  "Do  that."  If  you  struggle  long  and  hard  for  a  thing  it 
becomes  infinitely  sweet  to  you. 

Was  there  a  kind  of  hatred  between  the  father  and  the  older  son  of  the 
Grey  family?  "You  are  one  also  who  has  this  thing  —  the  impulse  to 
power,  so  like  my  own.  Now  you  are  young  and  I  am  growing  old."  Ad- 
miration mixed  with  fear.  If  you  would  retain  power  it  will  not  do  to 
admit  fear. 

The  young  Don  was  so  curiously  like  the  father.  There  were  the  same 
lines  about  the  jaws,  the  same  eyes.  They  were  both  heavy  men.  Already 
the  young  man  walked  like  the  father,  slammed  doors  as  did  the  father. 
There  was  the  same  curious  lack  of  delicacy  of  thought  and  touch  —  the 
heaviness  that  plows  through,  gets  things  done.  When  John  Grey  had 
married  Louise  Aspinwahl  he  was  already  a  mature  man,  on  his  way  to 
success.  Such  men  do  not  marry  young  and  recklessly.  Now  he  was  near- 
ing  sixty  and  there  was  the  son  —  so  like  himself,  having  the  same  kind  of 
strength. 

Both  land  lovers,  possession  lovers.  "It  is  my  farm,  my  house,  my 
horses,  cattle,  sheep."  Soon  now,  another  ten  years,  fifteen  at  the  most,  and 
the  father  would  be  ready  for  death.  "See,  already  my  hand  slips  a  little. 
All  of  this  to  go  out  of  my  grasp."  He,  John  Grey,  had  not  got  all  of  these 
possessions  so  easily.  It  had  taken  much  patience,  much  persistence.  No 
one  but  himself  would  ever  quite  know.  Five,  ten,  fifteen  years  of  work 
and  saving,  getting  the  Aspinwahl  farm  piece  by  piece.  'The  fools!"  They 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  235 

had  liked  to  think  of  themselves  as  aristocrats,  throwing  the  land  away, 
now  twenty  acres,  now  thirty,  now  fifty. 

Raising  horses  that  could  never  plow  an  acre  of  land. 
And  they  had  robbed  the  land  too,  had  never  put  anything  back,  doing 
nothing  to  enrich  it,  build  it  up.  Such  a  one  thinking:  Tm  an  Aspinwahl, 
a  gentleman.  I  do  not  soil  my  hands  at  the  plow." 

"Fools  who  do  not  know  the  meaning  of  land  owned,  possessions,  money 
—  responsibility.  It  is  they  who  are  second-rate  men." 

He  had  got  an  Aspinwahl  for  a  wife  and,  as  it  had  turned  out,  she  was 
the  best,  the  smartest  and,  in  the  end,  the  best-looking  one  of  the  lot. 

And  now  there  was  his  son,  standing  at  the  moment  near  the  mother. 
They  had  both  come  down  off  the  porch.  It  would  be  natural  and  right 
for  this  one  —  he  being  what  he  already  was,  what  he  would  become  — 
for  him,  in  his  turn,  to  come  into  possession,  to  take  command. 

There  would  be,  of  course,  the  rights  of  the  other  children.  If  you  have 
the  stuff  in  you  (John  Grey  felt  that  his  son  Don  had)  there  is  a  way  to 
manage.  You  buy  the  others  out,  make  arrangements.  There  was  Ted  — 
he  wouldn't  be  alive  —  and  Mary  and  the  two  younger  children.  "The 
better  for  you  if  you  have  to  struggle." 

All  of  this,  the  implication  of  the  moment  of  sudden  struggle  between  a 
father  and  son,  coming  slowly  afterwards  to  the  man's  daughter,  as  yet 
little  more  than  a  child.  Does  the  drama  take  place  when  the  seed  is  put 
into  the  ground  or  afterwards  when  the  plant  has  pushed  out  of  the 
ground  and  the  bud  breaks  open,  or  still  later,  when  the  fruit  ripens? 
There  were  the  Greys  with  their  ability  —  slow,  saving,  able,  determined, 
patient.  Why  had  they  superseded  the  Aspimvahls  in  the  Rich  Valley? 
Aspinwahl  blood  also  in  the  two  children,  Mary  and  Ted. 

There  was  an  Aspinwahl  man  —  called  "Uncle  Fred,"  a  brother  to  Louise 
Grey  —  who  came  sometimes  to  the  farm.  He  was  a  rather  striking-looking, 
tall  old  man  with  a  gray  Vandyke  beard  and  a  mustache,  somewhat  shab- 
bily dressed  but  always  with  an  indefinable  air  of  class.  He  came  from  the 
county-seat  town,  where  he  lived  now  with  a  daughter  who  had  married  a 
merchant,  a  polite  courtly  old  man  who  always  froze  into  a  queer  silence 
in  the  presence  of  the  sister's  husband. 

The  son  Don  was  standing  near  the  mother  on  the  day  in  the  Fall,  and 
the  two  children,  Mary  and  Ted,  stood  apart. 

"Don't,  John,"  Louise  Grey  said  again.  The  father,  who  had  started  to- 
ward the  barns,  stopped. 
"Well,  I  guess  I  will." 

"No,  you  won't,"  said  young  Don,  speaking  suddenly.  There  was  a  queer 
fixed  look  in  his  eyes.   It  had  flashed  into  life  —  something  that  was  be- 
tween the  two  men:  "I  possess"  ...  "I  will  possess."  The  father  wheeled 
and  looked  sharply  at  the  son  and  then  ignored  him. 
For  a  moment  the  mother  continued  pleading. 


236  The  Arch  of  Experience 

"But  why,  why?" 

"They  make  too  much  shade.   The  grass  does  not  grow.* 

"But  there  is  so  much  grass,  so  many  acres  of  grass." 

John  Grey  was  answering  his  wife,  but  now  again  he  looked  at  his  son. 
There  were  unspoken  words  flying  back  and  forth. 

"I  possess.  I  am  in  command  here.  What  do  you  mean  by  telling  me 
that  I  won't?" 

"Hal    So!   You  possess  now  but  soon  I  will  possess." 

"I'll  see  you  in  hell  first." 

"You  fool!   Not  yet!   Not  yet!" 

None  of  the  words,  set  down  above,  was  spoken  at  the  moment,  and 
afterwards  the  daughter  Mary  never  did  remember  the  exact  words  that 
had  passed  between  the  two  men.  There  was  a  sudden  quick  flash  of 
determination  in  Don  —  even  perhaps  sudden  determination  to  stand  by 
the  mother  —  even  perhaps  something  else  —  a  feeling  in  the  young  Don 
out  of  the  Aspinwahl  blood  in  him  —  for  the  moment  tree  love  superseding 
grass  love  —  grass  that  would  fatten  steers.  .  .  . 

Winner  of  4H  club  prizes,  champion  young  corn-raiser,  judge  of  steers, 
land  lover,  possession  lover. 

"You  won't,"  Don  said  again. 

"Won't  what?" 

"Won't  cut  those  trees." 

The  father  said  nothing  more  at  the  moment  but  walked  away  from  the 
little  group  toward  the  barns.  The  sun  was  still  shining  brightly.  There 
was  a  sharp  cold  little  wind.  The  two  trees  were  like  bonfires  lighted 
against  distant  hills. 

It  was  the  noon  hour  and  there  were  two  men,  both  young,  employees  on 
the  farm,  who  lived  in  a  small  tenant  house  beyond  the  barns.  One  of 
them,  a  man  with  a  harelip,  was  married  and  the  other,  a  rather  hand- 
some silent  young  man,  boarded  with  him.  They  had  just  come  from  the 
midday  meal  and  were  going  toward  one  of  the  barns.  It  was  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Fall  corn-cutting  time  and  they  would  be  going  together  to  a 
distant  field  to  cut  corn. 

The  father  went  to  the  barn  and  returned  with  the  two  men.  They 
brought  axes  and  a  long  cross-cut  saw.  "I  want  you  to  cut  those  two  trees." 
There  was  something,  a  blind,  even  stupid  determination  in  the  man,  John 
Grey.  And  at  that  moment  his  wife,  the  mother  of  his  children  .  .  .  There 
was  no  way  any  of  the  children  could  ever  know  how  many  moments  of  the 
sort  she  had  been  through.  She  had  married  John  Grey.  He  was  her  man. 

"If  you  do,  Father  .  .  ."  Don  Grey  said  coldly. 

"Do  as  I  tell  you!  Cut  those  two  trees!"  This  addressed  to  the  two 
workmen.  The  one  who  had  a  harelip  laughed.  His  laughter  was  like  the 
bray  of  a  donkey. 

"Don't,"  said  Louise  Grey,  but  she  was  not  addressing  her  husband  this 
time.  She  stepped  to  her  son  and  put  a  hand  on  his  arm. 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  237 

"Don't. 

"Don't  cross  him.  Don't  cross  my  man."  Could  a  child  like  Mary  Grey 
comprehend?  It  takes  time  to  understand  things  that  happen  in  life.  Life 
unfolds  slowly  to  the  mind.  Mary  was  standing  with  Ted,  whose  young 
face  was  white  and  tense.  Death  at  his  elbow.  At  any  moment.  At  any 
moment. 

"I  have  been  through  this  a  hundred  times.  That  is  the  way  this  man 
I  married  has  succeeded.  Nothing  stops  him.  I  married  him;  I  have  had 
my  children  by  him. 

"We  women  choose  to  submit. 

"This  is  my  affair,  more  than  yours,  Don,  my  son." 

A  woman  hanging  onto  her  things  —  the  family,  created  about  her. 

The  son  not  seeing  things  with  her  eyes.  He  shook  off  his  mother's 
hand,  lying  on  his  arm.  Louise  Grey  was  younger  than  her  husband,  but, 
if  he  was  now  nearing  sixty,  she  was  drawing  near  fifty.  At  the  moment 
she  looked  very  delicate  and  fragile.  There  was  something,  at  the  moment, 
in  her  bearing  .  .  .  Was  there,  after  all,  something  in  blood,  the  Aspinwahl 
blood? 

In  a  dim  way  perhaps,  at  the  moment  the  child  Mary  did  comprehend. 
Women  and  their  men.  For  her  then,  at  that  time,  there  was  but  one  male, 
the  child  Ted.  Afterwards  she  remembered  how  he  looked  at  that  moment, 
the  curiously  serious  old  look  on  his  young  face.  There  was  even,  she 
thought  later,  a  kind  of  contempt  for  both  the  father  and  brother,  as 
though  he  might  have  been  saying  to  himself  —  he  couldn't  really  have 
been  saying  it  —  he  was  too  young:  "Well,  we'll  see.  This  is  something. 
These  foolish  ones  —  my  father  and  my  brother.  I  myself  haven't  long  to 
live.  I'll  see  what  I  can,  while  I  do  live." 

The  brother  Don  stepped  over  near  to  where  his  father  stood. 

"If  you  do,  Father  .  .  ."  he  said  again. 

"Well?" 

"I'll  walk  off  this  farm  and  I'll  never  come  back." 

"All  right.   Go  then." 

The  father  began  directing  the  two  men  who  had  begun  cutting  the 
trees,  each  man  taking  a  tree.  The  young  man  with  the  harelip  kept 
laughing,  the  laughter  like  the  bray  of  a  donkey.  "Stop  that,"  the  father 
said  sharply,  and  the  sound  ceased  abruptly.  The  son  Don  walked  away, 
going  rather  aimlessly  toward  the  barn.  He  approached  one  of  the  barns 
and  then  stopped.  The  mother,  white  now,  half  ran  into  the  house. 

The  son  returned  toward  the  house,  passing  the  two  younger  children 
without  looking  at  them,  but  did  not  enter.  The  father  did  not  look  at  him. 
He  went  hesitatingly  along  a  path  at  the  front  of  the  house  and  through  a 
gate  and  into  a  road.  The  road  ran  for  several  miles  down  through  the 
valley  and  then,  turning,  went  over  a  mountain  to  the  county-seat  town. 

As  it  happened,  only  Mary  saw  the  son  Don  when  he  returned  to 


238  The  Arch  of  Experience 

the  farm.  There  were  three  or  four  tense  days.  Perhaps,  all  the  time, 
the  mother  and  son  had  been  secretly  in  touch.  There  was  a  telephone  in 
the  house.  The  father  stayed  all  day  in  the  fields,  and  when  he  was  in  the 
house  was  silent. 

Mary  was  in  one  of  the  barns  on  the  day  when  Don  came  back  and  when 
the  father  and  son  met.  It  was  an  odd  meeting. 

The  son  came,  Mary  always  afterwards  thought,  rather  sheepishly.  The 
father  came  out  of  a  horse's  stall.  He  had  been  throwing  corn  to  work 
horses.  Neither  the  father  nor  the  son  saw  Mary.  There  was  a  car  parked 
in  the  barn  and  she  had  crawled  into  the  driver's  seat,  her  hands  on  the 
steering  wheel,  pretending  she  was  driving. 

'Well,"  the  father  said.  If  he  felt  triumphant,  he  did  not  show  his  feel- 
ing. 

"Well,"  said  the  son,  "I  have  come  back." 

"Yes,  I  see,"  the  father  said.  "They  are  cutting  corn."  He  walked  toward 
the  barn  door  and  then  stopped.  "It  will  be  yours  soon  now,"  he  said.  "You 
can  be  boss  then." 

He  said  no  more  and  both  men  went  away,  the  father  toward  the  distant 
fields  and  the  son  toward  the  house.  Mary  was  afterwards  quite  sure  that 
nothing  more  was  ever  said. 

What  had  the  father  meant? 

"When  it  is  yours  you  can  be  the  boss."  It  was  too  much  for  the  child. 
Knowledge  comes  slowly.  It  meant: 

"You  will  be  in  command,  and  for  you,  in  your  turn,  it  will  be  necessary 
to  assert. 

"Such  men  as  we  are  cannot  fool  with  delicate  stuff.  Some  men  are 
meant  to  command  and  others  must  obey.  You  can  make  them  obey  in 
your  turn. 

"There  is  a  kind  of  death. 

"Something  in  you  must  die  before  you  can  possess  and  command." 

There  was,  so  obviously,  more  than  one  kind  of  death.  For  Don  Grey 
one  kind  and  for  the  younger  brother  Ted,  soon  now  perhaps,  another. 

Mary  ran  out  of  the  barn  that  day,  wanting  eagerly  to  get  out  into  the 
light,  and  afterwards,  for  a  long  time,  she  did  not  try  to  think  her  way 
through  what  had  happened.  She  and  her  brother  Ted  did,  however, 
afterwards,  before  he  died,  discuss  quite  often  the  two  trees.  They  went  on 
a  cold  day  and  put  their  fingers  on  the  stumps,  but  the  stumps  were  cold. 
Ted  kept  asserting  that  only  men  get  their  legs  and  arms  cut  off,  and  she 
protested.  They  continued  doing  things  that  had  been  forbidden  Ted  to  do, 
but  no  one  protested,  and,  a  year  or  two  later,  when  he  died,  he  died  dur- 
ing the  night  in  his  bed. 

But  while  he  lived,  there  was  always,  Mary  afterwards  thought,  a  curious 
sense  of  freedom,  something  that  belonged  to  him  that  made  it  good,  a 
great  happiness,  to  be  with  him.  It  was,  she  finally  thought,  because  having 
to  die  his  kind  of  death,  he  never  had  to  make  the  surrender  his  brother 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  239 

had  made  —  to  be  sure  of  possessions,  success,  his  time  to  command  — 
would  never  have  to  face  the  more  subtle  and  terrible  death  that  had  come 
to  his  older  brother. 


There  Was  a  Child  Went  Forth 

JValt  "Whitman  •  iSi9-iS92 

Walt  Whitman  was  almost  spongelike  in  his  absorption  of  the 
sights  and  sounds  that  were  necessary  for  the  later  creation  of  the 
poems  which  went  into  Leaves  of  Grass  (1855).  This  poem  shows 
Whitman's  awareness  of  the  formative  effect  of  experience.  You,  too, 
have  "known"  just  as  much  as  did  Walt  Whitman  at  your  age.  Could 
you  "know"  those  experiences  as  well  as  he  knew  his  in  later  years, 
through  introspection  and  reflection?  What,  for  instance,  do  you 
think  were  the  important  events  of  your  childhood  that  have  made  you 
the  person  you  are? 

THERE  WAS  A  CHILD  went  forth  every  day, 

And  the  first  object  he  look'd  upon,  that  object  he  became, 

And  that  object  became  part  of  him  for  the  day  or  a  certain  part  of  the  day, 

Or  for  many  years  or  stretching  cycles  of  years. 

The  early  lilacs  became  part  of  this  child, 

And  grass  and  white  and  red  morning-glories  and  white  and  red  clover,  and 
the  song  of  the  phoebe-bird, 

And  the  Third-month  lambs  and  the  sow's  pink-faint  litter,  and  the  mare's 
foal  and  the  cow's  calf, 

And  the  noisy  brood  of  the  barnyard  or  by  the  mire  of  the  pond-side, 

And  the  fish  suspending  themselves  so  curiously  below  there,  and  the  beauti- 
ful curious  liquid, 

And  the  water-plants  with  their  graceful  flat  heads,  all  became  part  of  him. 

The  field-sprouts  of  Fourth-month  and  Fifth-month  became  part  of  him, 
Winter-grain  sprouts  and  those  of  the  light-yellow  corn,  and  the  esculent 

roots  of  the  garden, 
And  the  apple-trees  cover'd  with  blossoms  and  the  fruit  afterward,  and 

woodberries,  and  the  commonest  weeds  by  the  road, 
And  the  old  drunkard  staggering  home  from  the  outhouse  of  the  tavern 

whence  he  had  lately  risen, 

And  the  schoolmistress  that  pass'd,  and  the  quarrelsome  boys, 
And  the  tidy  and  fresh-cheek'd  girls,  and  the  barefoot  negro  boy  and  girl, 
And  all  the  changes  of  city  and  country  wherever  he  went. 


240  The  Arch  of  Experience 

His  own  parents,  he  that  had  father'd  him,  and  she  that  had  conceiv'd  him 

in  her  womb,  and  birth'd  him, 
They  gave  this  child  more  of  themselves  than  that, 
They  gave  him  afterward  every  day,  they  became  part  of  him. 
The  mother  at  home  quietly  placing  the  dishes  on  the  supper-table, 
The  mother  with  mild  words,  clean  her  cap  and  gown,  a  wholesome  odor 

falling  off  her  person  and  clothes  as  she  walks  by, 
The  father,  strong,  self-sufficient,  manly,  mean,  anger'd,  unjust, 
The  blow,  the  quick  loud  word,  the  tight  bargain,  the  crafty  lure. 
The  family  usages,  the  language,  the  company,  the  furniture,  the  yearning 

and  swelling  heart, 
Affection  that  will  not  be  gainsay 'd,  the  sense  of  what  is  real,  the  thought  if 

after  all  it  should  prove  unreal, 
The  doubts  of  day-time  and  the  doubts  of  night-t;me,  the  curious  whether 

and  how, 

Whether  that  which  appears  so  is  so,  or  is  it  all  flashes  and  specks? 
Men  and  women  crowding  fast  in  the  streets,  if  they  are  not  flashes  and 

specks,  what  are  they? 

The  streets  themselves  and  the  f  a9ades  of  houses,  and  goods  in  the  windows, 
Vehicles,  teams,  the  heavy-plank'd  wharves,  the  huge  crossing  at  the  ferries, 
The  village  on  the  highland  seen  from  afar  at  sunset,  the  river  between, 
Shadows,  aureola  and  mist,  the  light  falling  on  roofs  and  gables  of  white  or 

brown  two  miles  off, 
The  schooner  near  by  sleepily  dropping  down  the  tide,  the  little  boat  slack- 

tow'd  astern, 

The  hurrying  tumbling  waves,  quick-broken  crests,  slapping, 
The  strata  of  color'd  clouds,  the  long  bar  of  maroon-tint  away  solitary  by 

itself,  the  spread  of  purity  it  lies  motionless  in, 
The  horizon's  edge,  the  flying  sea-crow,  the  fragrance  of  salt  marsh  and 

shore  mud, 
These  became  part  of  that  child  who  then  went  forth  every  day,  and  who 

now  goes,  and  will  always  go  forth  every  day. 


In  and  Beyond  the  Family  241 


Here  are  four  poems  touching  on  various  aspects  of  the  young  self 
and  the  wider,  adult  world  beyond  the  home.  From  them  you  may 
perhaps  discern  that  there  are  certain  kinds  of  experiences,  or  feelings 
about  experience,  which  may  be  better  caught  by  poetry  than  by  prose 
statement. 


Peter  at  Fourteen 

Constance  Carrier  •  *POS- 

WHAT  do  you  care  for  Caesar,  who  yourself 
are  in  three  parts  divided,  and  must  find, 
past  daydream  and  rebellion  and  bravado, 
the  final  shape  and  substance  of  your  mind? 

What  are  the  Belgae,  the  Helvetii 
to  you?   I  doubt  that  you  will  read  in  them 
metaphor  of  your  stand  against  dominion, 
or  see  as  yours  their  desperate  stratagem. 

They  found  their  tribal  rank,  their  feuds,  their  freedom, 

obliterated,  lost  beyond  return. 

It  took  them  years  to  see  that  law  and  order 

could  teach  them  things  that  they  might  care  to  learn. 

As  fiercely  individual,  as  violent 
as  they,  you  clutch  your  values  and  your  views, 
fearful  that  self  may  not  survive  absorption. 
(Who  said  to  learn  at  first  is  like  to  lose?) 

Not  courage,  no,  but  nature  will  betray  you. 
You  will  stop  fighting,  finally,  and  your  pride, 
that  fed  so  long  upon  your  independence, 
flourish  on  what  convention  can  provide, 

till  you  may  grow  more  Roman  than  the  Romans, 
contemptuous  of  pagan  broils  and  brawls, 
and  even,  mastering  your  mentors'  knowledge, 
go  on  to  build  cathedrals,  like  the  Gauls. 


Reprinted  from  New  Poems  by  American  Poets,  edited  by  Rolfe  Humphries.   Copy- 
right, 1953,  by  Ballantine  Books,  Inc. 


The  Secret  Heart 

Robert  P.  Tristram  Cojfin  •  {892- 

ACROSS  the  years  he  could  recall 
His  father  one  way  best  of  all. 

In  the  stillest  hour  of  night 
The  boy  awakened  to  a  light. 

Half  in  dreams  he  saw  his  sire 
With  his  great  hands  full  of  fire. 

The  man  had  struck  a  match  to  see 
If  his  son  slept  peacefully. 

He  held  his  palms  each  side  the  spark 
His  love  had  kindled  in  the  dark. 

His  two  hands  were  curved  apart 
In  the  semblance  of  a  heart. 

He  wore,  it  seemed  to  his  small  son, 
A  bare  heart  on  his  hidden  one, 

A  heart  that  gave  out  such  a  glow 
No  son  awake  could  bear  to  know. 

It  showed  a  look  upon  a  face 
Too  tender  for  the  day  to  trace. 

One  instant,   it  lit  all  about, 
And  then  the  secret  heart  went  out. 

But  it  shone  long  enough  for  one 
To  know  that  hands  held  up  the  sun. 

Reprinted  from  Robert  P.  Tristram  Coffin,  Collected  Poems.   Copyright,  1939,  by  The 
Macmillan  Company,  and  used  with  the  publisher's  permission. 


242 


Returning 

Emily  Dickinson  •  f830-4886 

I  YEAKS  had  been  from  home, 
And  now,  before  the  door, 
I  dared  not  open,  lest  a  face 
I  never  saw  before 

Stare  vacant  into  mine 
And  ask  my  business  there. 
My  business,  —  just  a  life  I  left, 
Was  such  still  dwelling  there? 

I  fumbled  at  my  nerve, 
I    scanned   the   windows    near; 
The  silence  like  an  ocean  rolled, 
And  broke  against  my  ear. 

I  laughed  a  wooden  laugh 

That  I  could  fear  a  door, 

Who  danger  and  the  dead  had  faced, 

But  never  quaked  before. 

I  fitted  to  the  latch 

My  hand,  with  trembling  care, 

Lest  back  the  awful  door  should  spring, 

And  leave  me  standing  there. 

I  moved  my  fingers  off 

As  cautiously  as  glass, 

And  held  my  ears,  and  like  a  thief 

Fled  gasping  from  the  house. 


243 


Spring  and  Fall 

TO  A  YOUNG  CHILD 
Qerard  JWanley  Hopkins  •  {844—4889 

MARGARET,  are  you  grieving 

Over  Goldengrove  unleaving? 

Leaves,  like  the  things  of  man,  you 

With  your  fresh  thoughts  care  for,  can  you? 

Ah!  as  the  heart  grows  older 

It  will  come  to  such  sights  colder 

By  and  by,  nor  spare  a  sigh 

Though  worlds  of  wanwood  leafmeal  lie; 

And  yet  you  will  weep  and  know  why. 

Now  no  matter,  child,  the  name: 

Sorrow's   springs   are   the   same. 

Nor  mouth  had,  no  nor  mind,  expressed 

What  heart  heard  of,  ghost  guessed: 

It  is  the  blight  man  was  born  for, 

It  is  Margaret  you  mourn  for. 


244 


Self  and  Others 


"Fundamentally,  we  re  all 
very  much  alike" 


On  a  Certain  Blindness  in 

Human  Beings     &       "William  James  •  1842-1910 


To  understand  other  people  we  must  have  sympathy  —  the  ability 
to  feel  with  them  —  the  ability  to  see  them  as  they  see  themselves.  If 
we  cannot  do  this  we  suffer  the  "blindness"  discussed  by  James  in  the 
essay  from  which  these  opening  paragraphs  are  taken,  and  our  in- 
terpretation of  other  people  will  be  an  egocentric  one. 

OUR  JUDGMENTS  concerning  the  worth  of  things,  big  or  little,  depend  on 
the  feelings  the  things  arouse  in  us.  Where  we  judge  a  thing  to  be  precious 
in  consequence  of  the  idea  we  frame  of  it,  this  is  only  because  the  idea  is 
itself  associated  already  with  a  feeling.  If  we  were  radically  feelingless, 
and  if  ideas  were  the  only  things  our  mind  could  entertain,  we  should  lose 
all  our  likes  and  dislikes  at  a  stroke,  and  be  unable  to  point  to  any  one 
situation  or  experience  in  life  more  valuable  or  significant  than  any  other. 
Now  the  blindness  in  human  beings,  of  which  this  discourse  will  treat,  is 
the  blindness  with  which  we  all  are  afflicted  in  regard  to  the  feelings  of 
creatures  and  people  different  from  ourselves. 

From  Talks  to  Teachers  by  William  James  (New  York:  Henry  Holt  and  Company, 
Inc.,  1909),  pp.  229-234.  Reprinted  by  permission  of  Henry  Holt  and  Company,  Inc. 

245 


246  The  Arch  of  Experience 

We  are  practical  beings,  each  of  us  with  limited  functions  and  duties  to 
perform.  Each  is  bound  to  feel  intensely  the  importance  of  his  own  duties 
and  the  significance  of  the  situations  that  call  these  forth.  But  this  feeling 
is  in  each  of  us  a  vital  secret,  for  sympathy  with  which  we  vainly  look  to 
others.  The  others  are  too  much  absorbed  in  their  own  vital  secrets  to 
take  an  interest  in  ours.  Hence  the  stupidity  and  injustice  of  our  opinions, 
so  far  as  they  deal  with  the  significance  of  alien  lives.  Hence  the  falsity  of 
our  judgments,  so  far  as  they  presume  to  decide  in  an  absolute  way  on  the 
value  of  other  persons'  conditions  or  ideals. 

Take  our  dogs  and  ourselves,  connected  as  we  are  by  a  tie  more  intimate 
than  most  ties  in  this  world;  and  yet,  outside  of  that  tie  of  friendly  fond- 
ness, how  insensible,  each  of  us,  to  all  that  makes  life  significant  for  the 
other!  —  we  to  the  rapture  of  bones  under  hedges,  or  smells  of  trees  and 
lamp-posts,  they  to  the  delights  of  literature  and  art.  As  you  sit  reading 
the  most  moving  romance  you  ever  fell  upon,  what  sort  of  a  judge  is  your 
fox-terrier  of  your  behavior?  With  all  his  good  will  toward  you,  the  nature 
of  your  conduct  is  absolutely  excluded  from  his  comprehension.  To  sit 
there  like  a  senseless  statue,  when  you  might  be  taking  him  to  walk  and 
throwing  sticks  for  him  to  catch!  What  queer  disease  is  this  that  comes 
over  you  every  day,  of  holding  things  and  staring  at  them  like  that  for  hours 
together,  paralyzed  of  motion  and  vacant  of  all  conscious  life?  The  African 
savages  came  nearer  the  truth;  but  they,  too,  missed  it,  when  they 
gathered  wonderingly  round  one  of  our  American  travellers  who,  in  the 
interior,  had  just  come  into  possession  of  a  stray  copy  of  the  New  York 
Commercial  Advertiser,  and  was  devouring  it  column  by  column.  When 
he  got  through,  they  offered  him  a  high  price  for  the  mysterious  object; 
and,  being  asked  for  what  they  wanted  it,  they  said:  "For  an  eye  medicine," 
—  that  being  the  only  reason  they  could  conceive  of  for  the  protracted 
bath  which  he  had  given  his  eyes  upon  its  surface. 

The  spectator's  judgment  is  sure  to  miss  the  root  of  the  matter,  and  to 
possess  no  truth.  The  subject  judged  knows  a  part  of  the  world  of  reality 
which  the  judging  spectator  fails  to  see,  knows  more  while  the  spectator 
knows  less;  and,  wherever  there  is  conflict  of  opinion  and  difference  of 
vision,  we  are  bound  to  believe  that  the  truer  side  is  the  side  that  feels  the 
more,  and  not  the  side  that  feels  the  less. 

Let  me  take  a  personal  example  of  the  kind  that  befalls  each  one  of  us 
daily:  — 

Some  years  ago,  while  journeying  in  the  mountains  of  North  Carolina,  I 
passed  by  a  large  number  of  "coves,"  as  they  call  them  there,  or  heads  of 
small  valleys  between  the  hills,  which  had  been  newly  cleared  and  planted. 
The  impression  on  my  mind  was  one  of  unmitigated  squalor.  The  settler 
had  in  every  case  cut  down  the  more  manageable  trees,  and  left  their 
charred  stumps  standing.  The  larger  trees  he  had  girdled  and  killed,  in 
order  that  their  foliage  should  not  cast  a  shade.  He  had  then  built  a  log 
cabin,  plastering  its  chinks  with  clay,  and  had  set  up  a  tall  zigzag  rail 


Self  and  Others  247 

fence  around  the  scene  of  his  havoc,  to  keep  the  pigs  and  cattle  out. 
Finally,  he  had  irregularly  planted  the  intervals  between  the  stumps  and 
trees  with  Indian  corn,  which  grew  among  the  chips;  and  there  he  dwelt 
with  his  wife  and  babes  —  an  axe,  a  gun,  a  few  utensils,  and  some  pigs  and 
chickens  feeding  in  the  woods,  being  the  sum  total  of  his  possessions. 

The  forest  had  been  destroyed;  and  what  had  "improved"  it  out  of 
existence  was  hideous,  a  sort  of  ulcer,  without  a  single  element  of  artificial 
grace  to  make  up  for  the  loss  of  Nature's  beauty.  Ugly,  indeed,  seemed 
the  life  of  the  squatter,  scudding,  as  the  sailors  say,  under  bare  poles,  be- 
ginning again  away  back  where  our  first  ancestors  started,  and  by  hardly  a 
single  item  the  better  off  for  all  the  achievements  of  the  intervening  genera- 
tions. 

Talk  about  going  back  to  nature!  I  said  to  myself,  oppressed  by  the 
dreariness,  as  I  drove  by.  Talk  of  a  country  life  for  one's  old  age  and  for 
one's  children!  Never  thus,  with  nothing  but  the  bare  ground  and  one's 
bare  hands  to  fight  the  battle!  Never,  without  the  best  spoils  of  culture 
woven  in!  The  beauties  and  commodities  gained  by  the  centuries  are 
sacred.  They  are  our  heritage  and  birthright.  No  modern  person  ought  to 
be  willing  to  live  a  day  in  such  a  state  of  rudimentariness  and  denudation. 

Then  I  said  to  the  mountaineer  who  was  driving  me,  "What  sort  of  peo- 
ple are  they  who  have  to  make  these  new  clearings?"  "All  of  us,"  he  re- 
plied. "Why,  we  ain't  happy  here,  unless  we  are  getting  one  of  these  coves 
under  cultivation."  I  instantly  felt  that  I  had  been  losing  the  whole  inward 
significance  of  the  situation.  Because  to  me  the  clearings  spoke  of  naught 
but  denudation,  I  thought  that  to  those  whose  sturdy  arms  and  obedient 
axes  had  made  them  they  could  tell  no  other  story.  But,  when  they  looked 
on  the  hideous  stumps,  what  they  thought  of  was  personal  victory.  The 
chips,  the  girdled  trees,  and  the  vile  split  rails  spoke  of  honest  sweat,  per- 
sistent toil,  and  final  reward.  The  cabin  was  a  warrant  of  safety  for  self  and 
wife  and  babes.  In  short,  the  clearing,  which  to  me  was  a  mere  ugly  picture 
on  the  retina,  was  to  them  a  symbol  redolent  with  moral  memories  and  sang 
a  very  paean  of  duty,  struggle,  and  success. 

I  had  been  as  blind  to  the  peculiar  ideality  of  their  conditions  as  they 
certainly  would  also  have  been  to  the  ideality  of  mine,  had  they  had  a 
peep  at  my  strange  indoor  academic  ways  of  life  at  Cambridge. 

Wherever  a  process  of  life  communicates  an  eagerness  to  him  who  lives 
it,  there  the  life  becomes  genuinely  significant.  Sometimes  the  eagerness 
is  more  knit  up  with  the  motor  activities,  sometimes  with  the  perceptions, 
sometimes  with  the  imagination,  sometimes  with  reflective  thought.  But, 
wherever  it  is  found,  there  is  the  zest,  the  tingle,  the  excitement  of  reality; 
and  there  is  "importance"  in  the  only  real  and  positive  sense  in  which  im- 
portance ever  anywhere  can  be.  ... 


John  and  Thomas 

Oliver  Wendell  IHolmes  •  i809-i894 


How  many  separate  sketches  of  yourself  could  you  give,  each  as 
you  are  seen  by  a  certain  other  person  —  your  mother,  your  father,  your 
younger  brother,  or  by  yourself  in  different  moods  or  situations?  Which 
is  the  "real"  you?  William  James  discusses  the  question  at  length  in  a 
famous  chapter  of  his  classic  Principles  of  Psychology.  In  a  few  words 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  points  out  the  complicated  problem  of  Self 
and  Others. 

WHEN  John  and  Thomas  .  .  .  are  talking  together,  it  is  natural  enough  that 
among  the  six  there  should  be  more  or  less  confusion  and  misapprehen- 
sion. .  .  . 

I  think,  I  said,  I  can  make  it  plain  to  Benjamin  Franklin  here  that  there 
are  at  least  six  personalities  distinctly  to  be  recognized  as  taking  part  in 
that  dialogue  between  John  and  Thomas. 

1.  The  real  John;  known  only  to  his  Maker. 

Three  2.  John's  ideal  John;  never  the  real  one,  and  often  very 

Johns  unlike  him. 

3.  Thomas's  ideal  John;  never  the  real  John,  nor  John's 
John,  but  often  very  unlike  either. 

Three  1.  The  real  Thomas. 

Thomases  2.  Thomas's  ideal  Thomas. 

3.  John's  ideal  Thomas. 

Only  one  of  the  three  Johns  is  taxed;  only  one  can  be  weighed  on  a 
platform  balance;  but  the  other  two  are  just  as  important  in  the  con- 
versation. Let  us  suppose  the  real  John  to  be  old,  dull,  and  ill-looking. 
But  as  the  Higher  Powers  have  not  conferred  on  men  the  gift  of  seeing 
themselves  in  the  true  light,  John  very  possibly  conceives  himself  to  be 
youthful,  witty,  and  fascinating,  and  talks  from  the  point  of  view  of  this 
ideal.  Thomas,  again,  believes  him  to  be  an  artful  rogue,  we  will  say; 
therefore  he  is,  so  far  as  Thomas's  attitude  in  the  conversation  is  concerned, 
an  artful  rogue,  though  really  simple  and  stupid.  The  same  conditions 
apply  to  the  three  Thomases.  It  follows,  that  until  a  man  can  be  found 
who  knows  himself  as  others  see  him,  there  must  be  at  least  six  persons 
engaged  in  every  dialogue  between  two.  Of  these,  the  least  important, 
philosophically  speaking,  is  the  one  that  we  have  called  the  real  person. 
No  wonder  two  disputants  often  get  angry,  when  there  are  six  of  them 
talking  and  listening  all  at  the  same  time. 

248 


The  Secret    Evangel  of 

OttO  McFeely     *F          Lloyd  Lewis  •  i89i-4P49 


"People  are  more  interesting  than  anybody,"  a  student  wrote.  Any 
person  is  interesting  if  you  understand  him  in  the  way  James  asks  us  to, 
with  sympathy.  A  person  need  not  be  a  "character"  to  be  interesting; 
but  then  we  all  Icnow  unusual  persons  —  "characters/'  Lloyd  Lewis 
presents  such  a  man,  one  whose  especially  interesting  trait  was  his  in- 
terest in  other  people,  and  his  dedicated  mission  of  bringing  excitement 
into  humdrum  lives. 

ALTHOUGH  the  village  of  Oak  Park,  Illinois,  has  never  recognized  the  fact, 
and  may  not  even  now  when  confronted  with  the  evidence,  it  contains 
a  remarkable  missionary  —  one  who  has  toiled  without  expectation  of 
gain,  here  or  hereafter  —  a  most  unusual  missionary  sitting  on  the  front 
porch  at  200  Forest  Avenue. 

He  is  Otto  McFeely,  who,  having  retired  from  the  editorship  of  the  local 
weekly,  Oak  Leaves,  takes  his  slippered  ease  these  days  and  thinks  back 
on  the  time  when  he  coursed  midwestern  roads,  spreading  his  particular 
benefaction. 

I  stumbled  upon  his  true  mission  one  summer  afternoon  twenty  years 
ago.  Up  to  then  I  had  shared  the  general  belief  that  he  was  merely  a  busy 
editor  who  took  motor  drives  for  recreation.  I  knew,  of  course,  that  he 
had  brought  into  being  the  Mosquito  Abatement  District,  but  there  was 
self  in  that  crusade,  for  he  had  been  angered  at  the  welts  the  insects  had 
raised  upon  his  infant  daughter.  And  his  success  in  fathering  the  Mothers' 
Pension  Law  had  been  prompted  in  part  by  his  desire  to  promote  some- 
thing impressive  for  his  bosom  friend,  Judge  Neal,  to  head  up  and  orate 
about.  What  I  didn't  know  about  was  McFeely's  secret  evangel. 

You  would  never  suspect  it  to  watch  him  in  his  office.  There,  all  week, 
he  was  polite  to  the  Puritans  who  brought  him  their  wholesome  items  of 
news  for  publication,  clergymen,  deacons,  presidents  of  ladies'  clubs, 
Kiwanians,  all  bringing  announcements  and  reports  of  their  manifold  chari- 
ties and  public  betterments.  But  of  a  Saturday  or  Sunday  he'd  go  off  in  his 
Ford  alone.  Sometimes  he'd  take  me  along,  and  the  first  time  he  did  I 
learned  why  he  went. 

He  stopped  the  car  on  this  hot  July  Saturday,  and  stepping  out,  shouted 
loudly  at  a  farmer  plowing  corn.  The  man  stopped  his  team  and  turned 
his  ear  to  listen.  McFeely  cleared  his  throat  and,  enunciating  with  care- 

From  It  Takes  All  Kinds,  copyright,  1947,  by  Lloyd  Lewis.  Reprinted  by  permission 
of  Harcourt,  Brace  and  Company,  Inc.,  pp.  31-34. 

249 


250  The  Arch  of  Experience 

ful  clarity,  informed  the  stranger  that  he  was  many  kinds  of  a  beast,  fiend, 
robber,  decadent,  and  that  his  ancestry  was  shameful  and  his  future  life 
one  of  eternal  damnation. 

The  farmer  stepped  off  his  plow,  cupped  a  work-hardened  hand  behind 
a  sunburnt  ear  and  called,  "What  did  you  say?" 

Patiently  McFeely  went  through  it  all  again,  adding  some  new  and 
more  loathsome  epithets  for  good  measure. 

Even  at  this  distance  I  could  see  the  farmer's  face  flush,  as  he  stiffened, 
clenched  his  fists,  and  tried  to  form  choking  retorts.  Before  he  could 
make  any  suitable  rejoinder,  however,  his  insulter  had  popped  back  into 
the  Ford  and  was  driving  away. 

After  a  short  silence,  I  asked  McFeely,  "Was  that  called  for?" 

He  sighed  and  wearily  said,  "You  are  too  obtuse  for  me  to  fool  with. 
However,  111  explain  what  I'd  think  anybody  could  see: 

"That  man  is  vegetating,  making  those  endless  rounds  of  the  monotonous 
corn  rows,  behind  two  horses  day  after  day.  Life  is  dull  to  him,  and  dull 
for  his  wife  in  that  house  over  there  because  he  has  nothing  to  say  when 
he  comes  in  for  dinner  and  supper.  He's  in  a  rut  and  so  is  she.  But  I  can 
bring  him,  and  her,  temporary  relief  if  not  a  cure. 

"At  noon  today  he'll  hurry  in  from  the  barn  to  tell  her  about  the  gross 
insult  he  received.  She'll  be  mad,  too.  It  does  people's  souls  good  to  get 
mad.  They'll  stay  mad  for  weeks,  hashing  over  the  cruelty  done  him, 
wondering  who  it  could  have  been  and  if  the  scoundrel  will  be  back. 
They'll  be  live,  thinking,  feeling  persons  for  a  time.  Life  will  become  vivid 
for  them. 

"You  see,  this  thing  would  be  no  good  unless  it  were  a  purely  gratuitous 
insult.  It  must  be  simon-pure  outrage.  Its  merit  lies  in  the  completeness 
of  its  injustice." 

A  handsome  fellow  with  a  Ronald  Colman  mustache  and  a  dashing  air, 
McFeely  used,  and  probably  still  uses,  his  romantic  aura  to  help  him  in 
his  mission.  For  example,  I  have  ridden  slowly  with  him  through  sleepy 
Illinois  towns  on  a  Sunday  afternoon  and  seen  him  suddenly  tip  his  hat 
gallantly  to  a  woman  of  fifty  who  sat  on  her  front  porch  dully  looking  out 
at  nothing.  McFeely's  dark  eyes  would  gleam  with  grave  tenderness  upon 
her  as  we  rolled  past. 

Then,  just  before  we  went  from  view,  he'd  look  back  with  restrained 
yearning  as  she,  leaning  forward  on  her  frozen  rocking  chair,  would  be 
peering  after  him. 

Did  he  know  her?  Had  he  ever  seen  her  before?  Certainly  not,  and 
would,  moreover,  never  come  this  way  again,  either. 

"But,"  said  he,  "she'll  wonder  for  weeks  who  that  was.  Could  it  have 
been  that  visiting  tenor  —  after  choir  practice  —  thirty  years  ago  —  ? 

"She'll  be  tender  to  her  husband  for  probably  sixty  days  all  on  account 
of  this,  and  full  of  tolerance  for  sinners  whenever  her  shrewish  neighbor 
women  start  gossiping." 


Self  and  Others  251 

Upon  rare  occasions  McFeely  has  been  able  to  cast  the  sweet  cloak  of 
his  evangel  over  quarreling  husbands  and  wives. 

"Driving  along,  I  keep  looking  for  them,"  he  told  me  once,  "Sunday 
drivers,  dressed  up  and  suddenly  sore  because  he  asked  her  if  she  had 
turned  out  the  fire  under  the  water  heater  before  they  left.  What  I  do 
then  is  pull  alongside,  scrape  fenders,  holler  for  a  halt,  and  then  lean  out 
and  call,  'Turn  around  and  go  home.  It's  hell  for  you  Sunday  drivers  on 
these  arterial  highways.  You'll  smash  that  beautiful  car  and/  here  I  look 
past  him  at  his  wife,  'you'll  kill  that  lovely  wife  of  yours/ 

"Then  I  step  on  the  gas  quick  and  get  away,  leaving  them  to  forget 
their  differences  in  the  mingled  emotions  my  solicitude  and  insolence  have 
forced  upon  them." 


A  Dill  Pickle    * 

'Katberim  ^Mansfield  •  i888-i923 


The  emotional  states,  the  feelings  that  lie  behind  our  overt  actions 
and  our  casual  meetings,  the  impulses  that  never  become  actualities  — 
Katherine  Mansfield  better  than  any  other  short-story  writer  is  able  to 
catch  these.  Two  people  meet,  former  sweethearts,  and  some  of  the 
old  feelings  begin  to  revive;  but  the  barrier  that  separated  them  before 
is  still  there;  a  disparity  of  feeling  and  personality  remains. 

AND  THEN,  after  six  years,  she  saw  him  again.  He  was  seated  at  one  of 
those  little  bamboo  tables  decorated  with  a  Japanese  vase  of  paper  daf- 
fodils. There  was  a  tall  plate  of  fruit  in  front  of  him,  and  very  carefully, 
in  a  way  she  recognized  immediately  as  his  "special"  way,  he  was  peeling 
an  orange. 

He  must  have  felt  that  shock  of  recognition  in  her  for  he  looked  up  and 
met  her  eyes.  Incredible!  He  didn't  know  her!  She  smiled;  he  frowned. 
She  came  towards  him.  He  closed  his  eyes  an  instant,  but  opening  them 
his  face  lit  up  as  though  he  had  struck  a  match  in  a  dark  room.  He  laid 
down  the  orange  and  pushed  back  his  chair,  and  she  took  her  little  warm 
hand  out  of  her  muff  and  gave  it  to  him. 

"Vera!"  he  exclaimed.  "How  strange.  Really,  for  a  moment  I  didn't 
know  you.  Won't  you  sit  down?  You've  had  lunch?  Won't  you  have  some 
coffee?" 

She  hesitated,  but  of  course  she  meant  to. 

Reprinted  from  The  Short  Stories  of  Katherine  Mansfield  by  permission  of  Alfred  A. 
Knopf,  Inc.,  and  John  Middleton  Murry,  Proprietor,  Katherine  Mansfield  Estate.  Copy- 
right, 1920,  1937,  by  Alfred  A.  Knopf,  Inc. 


252  The  Arch  of  Experience 

"Yes,  I'd  like  some  coffee."  And  she  sat  down  opposite  him. 

"You've  changed.  You've  changed  very  much,"  he  said,  staring  at  her 
with  that  eager,  lighted  look.  "You  look  so  well.  I've  never  seen  you  look 
so  well  before." 

"Really?"  She  raised  her  veil  and  unbuttoned  her  high  fur  collar.  "I 
don't  feel  very  well.  I  can't  bear  this  weather,  you  know." 

"Ah,  no.  You  hate  the  cold.  ..." 

"Loathe  it."  She  shuddered.  "And  the  worst  of  it  is  that  the  older  one 
grows  ..." 

He  interrupted  her.  "Excuse  me,"  and  tapped  on  the  table  for  the  wait- 
ress. "Please  bring  some  coffee  and  cream."  To  her:  "You  are  sure  you 
won't  eat  anything?  Some  fruit,  perhaps.  The  fruit  here  is  very  good." 

"No,  thanks.   Nothing." 

"Then  that's  settled."  And  smiling  just  a  hint  too  broadly  he  took  up  the 
orange  again.  "You  were  saying  —  the  older  one  grows  — " 

"The  colder,"  she  laughed.  But  she  was  thinking  how  well  she  remem- 
bered that  trick  of  his  —  the  trick  of  interrupting  her  —  and  of  how  it 
used  to  exasperate  her  six  years  ago.  She  used  to  feel  then  as  though  he, 
quite  suddenly,  in  the  middle  of  what  she  was  saying,  put  his  hand  over 
her  lips,  turned  from  her,  attended  to  something  different,  and  then  took 
his  hand  away,  and  with  just  the  same  slightly  too  broad  smile,  gave  her 
his  attention  again.  .  .  .  Now  we  are  ready.  That  is  settled. 

"The  colder!"  He  echoed  her  words,  laughing  too.  "Ah,  ah.  You  still 
say  the  same  things.  And  there  is  another  thing  about  you  that  is  not 
changed  at  all  —  your  beautiful  voice  —  your  beautiful  way  of  speaking." 
Now  he  was  very  grave;  he  leaned  towards  her,  and  she  smelled  the  warm, 
stinging  scent  of  the  orange  peel.  "You  have  only  to  say  one  word  and 
I  would  know  your  voice  among  all  other  voices.  I  don't  know  what  it  is 
—  I've  often  wondered  —  that  makes  your  voice  such  a  —  haunting  mem- 
ory. ...  Do  you  remember  that  first  afternoon  we  spent  together  at  Kew 
Gardens?  You  were  so  surprised  because  I  did  not  know  the  names  of 
any  flowers.  I  am  still  just  as  ignorant  for  all  your  telling  me.  But  when- 
ever it  is  very  fine  and  warm,  and  I  see  some  bright  colors  —  it's  awfully 
strange  —  I  hear  your  voice  saying:  'Geranium,  marigold  and  verbena.' 
And  I  feel  those  three  words  are  all  I  recall  of  some  forgotten,  heavenly 
language.  .  .  .  You  remember  that  afternoon?" 

"Oh,  yes,  very  well."  She  drew  a  long,  soft  breath,  as  though  the  paper 
daffodils  between  them  were  almost  too  sweet  to  bear.  Yet  what  had 
remained  in  her  mind  of  that  particular  afternoon  was  an  absurd  scene 
over  the  tea  table.  A  great  many  people  taking  tea  in  a  Chinese  pagoda, 
and  he  behaving  like  a  maniac  about  the  wasps  —  waving  them  away, 
flapping  at  them  with  his  straw  hat,  serious  and  infuriated  out  of  all  pro- 
portion to  the  occasion.  How  delighted  the  sniggering  tea  drinkers  had 
been.  And  how  she  had  suffered. 

But  now,  as  he  spoke,  that  memory  faded.   His  was  the  truer.   Yes,  it 


Self  and  Others  253 

had  been  a  wonderful  afternoon,  full  of  geranium  and  marigold  and  ver- 
bena, and  —  warm  sunshine.  Her  thoughts  lingered  over  the  last  two  words 
as  though  she  sang  them. 

In  the  warmth,  as  it  were,  another  memory  unfolded.  She  saw  herself 
sitting  on  a  lawn.  He  lay  beside  her,  and  suddenly,  after  a  long  silence, 
he  rolled  over  and  put  his  head  in  her  lap. 

"I  wish,"  he  said,  in  a  low,  troubled  voice,  "I  wish  that  I  had  taken 
poison  and  were  about  to  die  —  here  now!" 

At  that  moment  a  little  girl  in  a  white  dress,  holding  a  long,  dripping 
water  lily,  dodged  from  behind  a  bush,  stared  at  them,  and  dodged  back 
again.  But  he  did  not  see.  She  leaned  over  him. 

"Ah,  why  do  you  say  that?  I  could  not  say  that." 

But  he  gave  a  kind  of  soft  moan,  and  taking  her  hand  he  held  it  to  his 
cheek. 

"Because  I  know  I  am  going  to  love  you  too  much  —  far  too  much.  And 
I  shall  suffer  so  terribly,  Vera,  because  you  never,  never  will  love  me." 

He  was  certainly  far  better  looking  now  than  he  had  been  then.  He 
had  lost  all  that  dreamy  vagueness  and  indecision.  Now  he  had  the  air 
of  a  man  who  has  found  his  place  in  life,  and  fills  it  with  a  confidence  and 
an  assurance  which  was,  to  say  the  least,  impressive.  He  must  have  made 
money,  too.  His  clothes  were  admirable,  and  at  that  moment  he  pulled 
a  Russian  cigarette  case  out  of  his  pocket. 

"Won't  you  smoke?" 

"Yes,  I  will."  She  hovered  over  them.   "They  look  very  good." 

"I  think  they  are.  I  get  them  made  for  me  by  a  little  man  in  St.  James's 
Street.  I  don't  smoke  very  much.  I'm  not  like  you  —  but  when  I  do,  they 
must  be  delicious,  very  fresh  cigarettes.  Smoking  isn't  a  habit  with  me; 
it's  a  luxury  —  like  perfume.  Are  you  still  so  fond  of  perfumes?  Ah,  when 
I  was  in  Russia  ..." 

She  broke  in:  "You've  really  been  to  Russia?" 

"Oh,  yes.  I  was  there  for  over  a  year.  Have  you  forgotten  how  we  used 
to  talk  of  going  there?" 

"No,  I've  not  forgotten." 

He  gave  a  strange  half  laugh  and  leaned  back  in  his  chair.  "Isn't  it 
curious.  I  have  really  carried  out  all  those  journeys  that  we  planned. 
Yes,  I  have  been  to  all  those  places  that  we  talked  of,  and  stayed  in  them 
long  enough  to  —  as  you  used  to  say,  'air  oneself'  in  them.  In  fact,  I  have 
spent  the  last  three  years  of  my  life  traveling  all  the  time.  Spain,  Corsica, 
Siberia,  Russia,  Egypt.  The  only  country  left  is  China,  and  I  mean  to  go 
there,  too,  whexji  the  war  is  over." 

As  he  spoke,  so  lightly,  tapping  the  end  of  his  cigarette  against  the  ash- 
tray, she  fejt  the  strange  beast  that  had  slumbered  so  long  within  her 
bosom  stir,  stretch  itself,  yawn,  prick  up  its  ears,  and  suddenly  bound  to 
its  feet,  and  fix  its  longing,  hungry  stare  upon  those  far  away  places.  But 
all  she  said  was,  smiling  gently:  "How  I  envy  you." 


254  The  Arch  of  Experience 

He  accepted  that.  "It  has  been,"  he  said,  "very  wonderful  —  especially 
Russia.  Russia  was  all  that  we  had  imagined,  and  far,  far  more.  I  even 
spent  some  days  on  a  river  boat  on  the  Volga.  Do  you  remember  that 
boatman's  song  that  you  used  to  play?" 

"Yes."   It  began  to  play  in  her  mind  as  she  spoke. 

"Do  you  ever  play  it  now?" 

"No,  I've  no  piano." 

He  was  amazed  at  that.  "But  what  has  become  of  your  beautiful  piano?" 

She  made  a  little  grimace.    "Sold.   Ages  ago." 

"But  you  were  so  fond  of  music,"  he  wondered. 

"I've  no  time  for  it  now,"  said  she. 

He  let  it  go  at  that.  "That  river  life,"  he  went  on,  "is  something  quite 
special.  After  a  day  or  two  you  cannot  realize  that  you  have  ever  known 
another.  And  it  is  not  necessary  to  know  the  language  —  the  life  of  the 
boat  creates  a  bond  between  you  and  the  people  that's  more  than  sufficient. 
You  eat  with  them,  pass  the  day  with  them,  and  in  the  evening  there 
is  that  endless  singing." 

She  shivered,  hearing  the  boatman's  song  break  out  again  loud  and 
tragic,  and  seeing  the  boat  floating  on  the  darkening  river  with  melancholy 
trees  on  either  side.  .  .  .  "Yes,  I  should  like  that,"  said  she,  stroking  her 
muff. 

"You'd  like  almost  everything  about  Russian  life,"  he  said  warmly.  "It's 
so  informal,  so  impulsive,  so  free  without  question.  And  then  the  peasants 
are  so  splendid.  They  are  such  human  beings  —  yes,  that  is  it.  Even  the 
man  who  drives  your  carriage  has  —  has  some  real  part  in  what  is  hap- 
pening. I  remember  the  evening  a  party  of  us,  two  friends  of  mine  and 
the  wife  of  one  of  them,  went  for  a  picnic  by  the  Black  Sea.  We  took 
supper  and  champagne  and  ate  and  drank  on  the  grass.  And  while  we 
were  eating  the  coachman  came  up.  'Have  a  dill  pickle,'  he  said.  He 
wanted  to  share  with  us.  That  seemed  to  me  so  right,  so  —  you  know  what 
I  mean?" 

And  she  seemed  at  that  moment  to  be  sitting  on  the  grass  beside  the 
mysteriously  Black  Sea,  black  as  velvet,  and  rippling  against  the  banks 
in  silent,  velvet  waves.  She  saw  the  carriage  drawn  up  to  one  side  of 
the  road,  and  the  little  group  on  the  grass,  their  faces  and  hands  white  in 
the  moonlight.  She  saw  the  pale  dress  of  the  woman  outspread  and  her 
folded  parasol,  lying  on  the  grass  like  a  huge  pearl  crochet  hook.  Apart 
from  them,  with  his  supper  in  a  cloth  on  his  knees,  sat  the  coachman. 
"Have  a  dill  pickle,"  said  he,  and  although  she  was  not  certain  what  a  dill 
pickle  was,  she  saw  the  greenish  glass  jar  with  a  red  chili  like  a  parrot's 
beak  glimmering  through.  She  sucked  in  her  cheeks;  the  dfll  pickle  was 
terribly  sour.  .  .  . 

"Yes,  I  know  perfectly  what  you  mean,"  she  said. 

In  the  pause  that  followed  they  looked  at  each  other.  In  the  past  when 
they  had  looked  at  each  other  like  that  they  had  felt  such  a  boundless 


Self  and  Others  255 

understanding  between  them  that  their  souls  had,  as  it  were,  put  their 
arms  round  each  other  and  dropped  into  the  same  sea,  content  to  be 
drowned,  like  mournful  lovers.  But  now,  the  surprising  thing  was  that  it 
was  he  who  held  back.  He  who  said: 

"What  a  marvelous  listener  you  are.  When  you  look  at  me  with  those 
wild  eyes  I  feel  that  I  could  tell  you  things  that  I  would  never  breathe 
to  another  human  being." 

Was  there  just  a  hint  of  mockery  in  his  voice  or  was  it  her  fancy?  She 
could  not  be  sure. 

"Before  I  met  you,"  he  said,  "I  had  never  spoken  of  myself  to  anybody. 
How  well  I  remember  one  night,  the  night  that  I  brought  you  the  little 
Christmas  tree,  telling  you  all  about  my  childhood.  And  of  how  I  was 
so  miserable  that  I  ran  away  and  lived  under  a  cart  in  our  yard  for  two 
days  without  being  discovered.  And  you  listened,  and  your  eyes  shone,  and 
I  felt  that  you  had  even  made  the  little  Christmas  tree  listen  too,  as  in  a 
fairy  story." 

But  of  that  evening  she  had  remembered  a  little  pot  of  caviare.  It  had 
cost  seven  and  sixpence.  He  could  not  get  over  it.  Think  of  it  —  a  tiny 
jar  like  that  costing  seven  and  sixpence.  While  she  ate  it  he  watched  her, 
delighted  and  shocked. 

"No,  really,  that  is  eating  money.  You  could  not  get  seven  shillings 
into  a  little  pot  that  size.  Only  think  of  the  profit  they  must  make.  ..." 
And  he  had  begun  some  immensely  complicated  calculations.  .  .  .  But 
now  good-by  to  the  caviare.  The  Christmas  tree  was  on  the  table,  and 
the  little  boy  lay  under  the  cart  with  his  head  pillowed  on  the  yard  dog. 

"The  dog  was  called  Bosun,"  she  cried  delightedly. 

But  he  did  not  follow.  "Which  dog?  Had  you  a  dog?  I  don't  remember 
a  dog  at  all." 

"No,  no.  I  mean  the  yard  dog  when  you  were  a  little  boy."  He  laughed 
and  snapped  the  cigarette  case  to. 

"Was  he?  Do  you  know  I  had  forgotten  that.  It  seems  such  ages  ago. 
I  cannot  believe  that  it  is  only  six  years.  After  I  had  recognized  you 
today  —  I  had  to  take  such  a  leap  —  I  had  to  take  a  leap  over  my  whole 
life  to  get  back  to  that  time.  I  was  such  a  kid  then."  He  drummed  on  the 
table.  "I've  often  thought  how  I  must  have  bored  you.  And  now  I  under- 
stand so  perfectly  why  you  wrote  to  me  as  you  did  —  although  at  the 
time  that  letter  nearly  finished  my  life.  I  found  it  again  the  other  day, 
and  I  couldn't  help  laughing  as  I  read  it.  It  was  so  clever  —  such  a  true 
picture  of  me."  He  glanced  up.  "You're  not  going?" 

She  had  buttoned  her  collar  again  and  drawn  down  her  veil. 

"Yes,  I  am  afraid  I  must,"  she  said,  and  managed  a  smile.  Now  she 
knew  that  he  had  been  mocking. 

"Ah,  no,  please,"  he  pleaded.  "Don't  go  just  for  a  moment,"  and  he 
caught  up  one  of  her  gloves  from  the  table  and  clutched  at  it  as  if  that 
would  hold  her.  "I  see  so  few  people  to  talk  to  nowadays,  that  I  have 


256  The  Arch  of  Experience 

turned  into  a  sort  of  barbarian/'  he  said.  "Have  I  said  something  to  hurt 
you?" 

"Not  a  bit,"  she  lied.  But  as  she  watched  him  draw  her  glove  through 
his  fingers,  gently,  gently,  her  anger  really  did  die  down,  and  besides,  at 
the  moment  he  looked  more  like  himself  of  six  years  ago.  .  .  . 

"What  I  really  wanted  then/'  he  said  softly,  "was  to  be  a  sort  of  carpet 
—  to  make  myself  into  a  sort  of  carpet  for  you  to  walk  on  so  that  you  need 
not  be  hurt  by  the  sharp  stones  and  the  mud  that  you  hated  so.  It  was 
nothing  more  positive  than  that  —  nothing  more  selfish.  Only  I  did  desire, 
eventually,  to  turn  into  a  magic  carpet  and  carry  you  away  to  all  those 
lands  you  longed  to  see." 

As  he  spoke  she  lifted  her  head  as  though  she  drank  something;  the 
strange  beast  in  her  bosom  began  to  purr.  .  .  . 

"I  felt  that  you  were  more  lonely  than  anybody  else  in  the  world,"  he 
went  on,  "and  yet,  perhaps,  that  you  were  the  only  person  in  the  world  who 
was  really,  truly  alive.  Born  out  of  your  time,"  he  murmured,  stroking 
the  glove,  "fated." 

Ah,  God!  What  had  she  done!  How  had  she  dared  to  throw  away  her 
happiness  like  this.  This  was  the  only  man  who  had  ever  understood  her. 
Was  it  too  late?  Could  it  be  too  late?  She  was  that  glove  that  he  held 
in  his  fingers.  .  .  . 

"And  then  the  fact  that  you  had  no  friends  and  never  had  made  friends 
with  people.  How  I  understood  that,  for  neither  had  I.  Is  it  just  the  same 
now?" 

"Yes,"  she  breathed.   "Just  the  same.   I  am  as  alone  as  ever." 

"So  am  I,"  he  laughed  gently,  "just  the  same." 

Suddenly  with  a  quick  gesture  he  handed  her  back  the  glove  and  scraped 
his  chair  on  the  floor.  "But  what  seemed  to  me  so  mysterious  then  is 
perfectly  plain  to  me  now.  And  to  you,  too,  of  course.  ...  It  simply  was 
that  we  were  such  egoists  so  self-engrossed,  so  wrapped  up  in  ourselves 
that  we  hadn't  a  corner  in  our  hearts  for  anybody  else.  Do  you  know," 
he  cried,  naive  and  hearty,  and  dreadfully  like  another  side  of  that  old 
self  again,  "I  began  studying  a  Mind  System  when  I  was  in  Russia,  and  I 
found  that  we  were  not  peculiar  at  all.  It's  quite  a  well-known  form  of  ..." 

She  had  gone.  He  sat  there,  thunder-struck,  astounded  beyond  words. 
.  .  .  And  then  he  asked  the  waitress  for  his  bill. 

"But  the  cream  has  not  been  touched,"  he  said.  "Please  do  not  charge 
me  for  it." 


Self  and  Others  257 


The  general  theme  of  the  prose  selections  in  this  section  is  car- 
ried out  in  the  following  poems:  each  involves  "a  certain  blindness"  of 
some  human  beings  in  their  view  of  others. 


Richard  Cory 

Edwin  Arlington  Robinson 


WHENEVER  Richard  Cory  went  down  town, 
We  people  on  the  pavement  looked  at  him: 

He  was  a  gentleman  from  sole  to  crown, 
Clean  favored,  and  imperially  slim. 

And  he  was  always  quietly  arrayed, 
And  he  was  always  human  when  he  talked; 

But  still  he  fluttered  pulses  when  he  said, 

"Good-morning,"  and  he  glittered  when  he  walked. 

And  he  was  rich  —  yes,  richer  than  a  king  — 
And  admirably  schooled  in  every  grace: 

In  fine,  we  thought  that  he  was  everything 
To  make  us  wish  that  we  were  in  his  place. 

So  on  we  worked,  and  waited  for  the  light, 
And  went  without  the  meat,  and  cursed  the  bread; 

And  Richard  Cory,  one  calm  summer  night, 
Went  home  and  put  a  bullet  through  his  head. 


My  Last  Duchess 

Robert  'Browning 


SCENE:    FERRARA 

THAT'S  my  last  Duchess  painted  on  the  wall, 
Looking  as  if  she  were  alive.   I  call 
That  piece  a  wonder,  now:  Fr£  Pandolfs  hands 
Worked  busily  a  day,  and  there  she  stands. 
WilFt  please  you  sit  and  look  at  her?  I  said 
"Fr&  Pandolf  '  by  design,  for  never  read 

Edwin  Arlington  Robinson,  The  Children  of  the  Night  (New  York:  Charles  Scribner'i 
Sons,  1937). 


258  The  Arch  of  Experience 

Strangers  like  you  that  pictured  countenance, 

The  depth  and  passion  of  its  earnest  glance, 

But  to  myself  they  turned  (since  none  puts  by 

The  curtain  I  have  drawn  for  you,  but  I) 

And  seemed  as  they  would  ask  me,  if  they  durst, 

How  such  a  glance  came  there;  so,  not  the  first 

Are  you  to  turn  and  ask  thus.   Sir,  'twas  not 

Her  husband's  presence  only,  called  that  spot 

Of  joy  into  the  Duchess*  cheek:  perhaps 

Fr£  Pandolf  chanced  to  say,  "Her  mantle  laps 

Over  my  Lady's  wrist  too  much,''  or  "Paint 

Must  never  hope  to  reproduce  the  faint 

Half-flush  that  dies  along  her  throat";  such  stuff 

Was  courtesy,  she  thought,  and  cause  enough 

For  calling  up  that  spot  of  joy.   She  had 

A  heart  —  how  shall  I  say?  —  too  soon  made  glad, 

Too  easily  impressed;  she  liked  whate'er 

She  looked  on,  and  her  looks  went  everywhere. 

Sir,  'twas  all  onel    My  favor  at  her  breast, 

The  dropping  of  the  daylight  in  the  West, 

The  bough  of  cherries  some  officious  fool 

Broke  in  the  orchard  for  her,  the  white  mule 

She  rode  with  round  the  terrace  —  all  and  each 

Would  draw  from  her  alike  the  approving  speech, 

Or  blush,  at  least.    She  thanked  men,  —  good;  but  thanked 

Somehow  —  I  know  not  how  —  as  if  she  ranked 

My  gift  of  a  nine-hundred-years'-old  name 

With  anybody's  gift.    Who'd  stoop  to  blame 

This  sort  of  trifling?   Even  had  you  skill 

In  speech  —  (which  I  have  not)  —  to  make  your  will 

Quite  clear  to  such  an  one,  and  say,  "Just  this 

Or  that  in  you  disgusts  me;  here  you  miss, 

Or  there  exceed  the  mark"  —  and  if  she  let 

Herself  be  lessoned  so,  nor  plainly  set 

Her  wits  to  yours,  forsooth,  and  made  excuse, 

—  E'en  then  would  be  some  stooping,  and  I  choose 

Never  to  stoop.    Oh,  sir,  she  smiled,  no  doubt, 

Whene'er  I  passed  her;  but  who  passed  without 

Much  the  same  smile?  This  grew;  I  gave  commands; 

Then  all  smiles  stopped  together.   There  she  stands 

As  if  alive.  Will't  please  you  rise?  We'll  meet 

The  company  below,  then.    I  repeat, 

The  Count  your  master's  known  munificence 

Is  ample  warrant  that  no  just  pretence 

Of  mine  for  dowry  will  be  disallowed; 


Self  and  Others  259 

Though  his  fair  daughter's  self,  as  I  avowed 
At  starting,  is  my  object.  Nay,  well  go 
Together  down,  sir!   Notice  Neptune,  though, 
Taming  &  sea-horse,  thought  a  rarity, 
Which  Glaus  of  Innsbruck  cast  in  bronze  for  mel 


For  Anne  Gregory 

William  'Butler  yeats  •  i865-iP3P 

"NEVER  shall  a  young  man, 
Thrown  into  despair 
By  those  great  honey-colored 
Ramparts  at  your  ear, 
Love  you  for  yourself  alone 
And  not  your  yellow  hair." 

"But  I  can  get  a  hair-dye 
And  set  such  colour  there, 
Brown,  or  black,  or  carrot, 
That  young  men  in  despair 
May  love  me  for  myself  alone 
And  not  my  yellow  hair." 

"I  heard  an  old  religious  man 
But  yesternight  declare 
That  he  had  found  a  text  to  prove 
That  only  God,  my  dear, 
Could  love  you  for  yourself  alone 
And  not  your  yellow  hair." 

William  Butler  Yeats,  Collected  Poems  (New  York:  The  Macmillan  Company,  1950). 
Copyright,  1940,  by  Bertha  Georgie  Yeats.  Reprinted  by  permission  of  the  publishers, 
of  Mrs.  William  Butler  Yeats,  and  of  The  Macmillan  Company  of  Canada,  Ltd. 


A  ^Number 
of 


"We  must  all  try  to  get 

outside  ourselves,  Miss 

Tonkins." 


Midwestern  Weather 

Qrabam  Jiutton  •  4904— 


When  you  can't  think  of  anything  else  to  talk  about,  there's  al- 
ways the  weather.  "Everybody  talks  about  it,"  said  Mark  Twain,  "but 
nobody  does  anything  about  it."  Here  an  Englishman  who  spent 
several  years  in  Chicago,  after  living  in  various  parts  of  the  world,  talks 
about  midwestern  weather  —  and  makes  it  interesting. 

FORCED  BY  A  SAVAGE  climate  to  manufacture  his  own  defenses  against  it, 
and  to  surround  himself  with  the  greatest  material  aids  and  comforts  yet 
devised  by  humanity,  the  midwesterner  today  scarcely  gives  a  thought  to 
the  natural  obstacles  around  him  which  had  to  be  endured  and  overcome 
by  the  pioneers  of  his  grandfather's  day.  Of  these  obstacles,  none  was 
worse  than  the  climate  and  the  weather  of  the  region.  It  is  no  wonder 
that  so  many  of  the  domestic  mechanical  contrivances  and  defenses  against 
this  climate  were  invented  or  manufactured  in  the  Midwest. 

Of  all  the  regions  of  the  United  States,  the  Midwest  has  what  seems 
both  to  Americans  and  to  other  visitors  the  most  unkind  climate  and  the 

Graham  Hutton,  Midwest  at  Noon  (Chicago:  University  of  Chicago  Press,  1946), 
pp.  7-14. 

260 


A  Number  of  Things  261 

most  inclement  weather.  That  probably  explains  one  of  the  general  prac- 
tices of  the  better-off,  and  one  of  the  general  aims  of  those  hoping  to  get 
rich  enough,  which  is  to  leave  the  Midwest  at  least  twice  every  year  on 
vacation.  Many  of  them  ultimately  retire  altogether  from  it.  In  every 
case  the  aspirants  make  for  the  sun  in  winter,  for  dryness  at  all  times,  and 
for  a  temperate  zone  in  retirement.  Lest  I  be  thought  grimly  facetious,  or 
just  an  Englishman  preoccupied  with  that  English  weather  which  has 
been  one  of  the  stock  American  vaudeville  jokes  for  three  generations,  let 
me  develop  this  point. 

There  are  colder  American  regions  in  winter,  and  regions  which  are 
hotter  in  summer,  than  the  Midwest;  and  the  Midwest  apologist,  with  the 
Americans'  consuming  passion  only  for  the  averages  in  statistics  (and  in 
almost  everything  else),  points  to  the  average  or  mean  winter  and  summer 
temperatures  in  the  Midwest.  But,  as  usual,  averages  signify  little.  What 
is  significant  is  the  variation  of  extremes  about  an  average;  and,  as  I  said 
earlier,  the  Midwest  lies  in  the  latitude  and  longitude  of  American  extremes 
and  within  parallels  of  paradox.  Nowhere  else  in  America  do  you  have 
to  suffer  during  the  year  such  wild  combinations,  rapid  changes,  and  wide 
extremes  of  weather  varying  around  climatic  averages.  Thus  in  the  South, 
Southwest,  Rockies,  or  Great  Plains,  one  season  will  be  either  hotter  or 
colder  than  it  is  anywhere  else  in  America;  but  in  those  regions  Nature's 
compensation  is  the  long  mildness  of  the  other  seasons.  This  is  even  true 
of  Maine,  Vermont,  and  New  Hampshire  in  the  Northeast.  But  not  so  in 
the  Midwest.  There,  and  even  in  the  most  extreme  portions  of  the  region, 
the  mercury  in  winter  seldom  falls  below  an  average  of  10°  below  zero, 
and  in  summer  seldom  rises  above  a  mean  of  90°.  That  seems  extreme 
enough  to  any  European  except  perhaps  someone  from  the  heart  of  Russia; 
but  it  is  as  nothing  compared  to  the  extreme  variations  between  these 
summer  and  winter  averages. 

The  Midwest  is,  of  course,  vast  and  is  bound  to  show  within  its  ambit 
great  variations.  On  its  confines  —  in  Missouri  and  in  the  south  of  Illinois, 
Indiana,  and  Ohio  —  winter  is  always  milder  than  at  the  core  of  the  region. 
These  were  the  territories  settled  by  the  first  pioneers.  The  summer  of 
these  southern  territories  of  the  region  is,  however,  correspondingly  fiercer; 
temperatures  often  reach  105°.  Yet  both  their  summers  and  their  winters 
are  relatively  drier.  There  is  not  so  much  humidity.  So  in  the  north  and 
extreme  west  of  the  region,  in  Minnesota,  upper  Wisconsin,  and  North 
Michigan,  the  summers  are  milder  but  the  winters  fiercer;  the  mercury  often 
falls  to  35°  below  zero.  Yet  both  summers  and  winters  are  drier.  Humidity 
is  not  such  a  nuisance. 

It  is  the  core  of  the  Midwest  which  has  the  worst  weather:  the  area 
east  of  the  Mississippi  including  the  northern  halves  of  Illinois,  Indiana, 
and  Ohio,  the  Michigan  peninsula,  and  southern  Wisconsin.  This  is  the 
coastal  area  of  the  Great  Lakes,  which  here  exercise  an  attraction  on  the 
transcontinental  lines  of  temperature  and  pressure  and  form  a  kind  of 


262  The  Arch  of  Experience 

water  pocket  around  which  the  great  winds  sweep  snow,  rain,  and  cold 
spells. 

Dwellers  in  the  belt  that  runs  from  Milwaukee  to  Chicago,  the  big  cities 
along  the  Indiana-Michigan  coastal  rim,  Detroit,  Toledo,  Cleveland,  Erie, 
and  Buffalo  and  a  long  way  inland,  during  the  ferocious  winters  are 
weighed  down  by  a  cold  humidity  and  blasted  by  icy  winds  reaching  gale 
dimensions.  They  are  snowed-in  frequently  by  blizzards  that  blacken 
noonday  and  paralyze  all  forms  of  traffic.  They  are  exposed  to  the  packing 
of  snow  into  miniature  but  almost  as  deadly  Himalayas  of  solid  black  ice 
on  every  path  from  the  home  driveway  to  the  sidewalks  of  the  metropolis. 
Blizzards  snow-in  the  suburbanites  to  this  day;  and  the  normal  snows  are 
heavy  enough  to  make  shoveling  and  cleaning,  overshoes  and  snow  boots, 
an  indispensable  part  of  every  midwesterner's  winter.  Rare,  indeed,  in 
any  winter  in  this  wide  core  of  the  Midwest  is  an  ideal  winter-sports  day: 
clear,  dry  air,  bright-blue  skies,  hard,  strong  sun,  no  wind,  and  zero  or 
subzero  temperature.  When  such  a  day  dawns,  everyone  talks  about  it: 
commuters  and  housewives  and  storekeepers  and  school  children. 

In  defense  against  the  bitter  winds  and  cold  the  Midwest  has  developed 
artificial  heating  in  its  houses,  offices,  and  vehicles  to  a  point  at  which  its 
people  are  alternately  baked  and  frozen  a  dozen  times  a  day.  It  is  not 
fantastic  to  suppose  that  this  contributes  to  that  extraordinarily  widespread 
Midwest  affliction  known  as  "sinus  trouble,"  and  it  certainly  contributes  to 
the  pallor  of  the  people  in  winter,  just  as  the  equally  savage  summer  sun, 
the  wind,  and  the  extreme  variations  of  natural  and  artificial  temperatures 
contribute  to  the  more  numerous  lines  and  wrinkles  of  Midwest  faces. 

In  this  core  of  the  Midwest  there  is  no  spring  —  a  significant  natural 
phenomenon  which  may  account  for  at  least  one  big  gap  in  the  romantic 
literature  and  poetry  of  the  Midwest.  Winter  lasts,  solid  and  remorseless, 
from  Thanksgiving  to  March.  Then  it  often  begins  to  relent  for  a  tempting 
few  days  which  fool  plants  and  people  alike.  Next,  the  fierce  solidity  of 
winter  gives  way  to  chill,  howling  winds,  torrents  of  rain  which  seem  as 
if  they  should  be  falling  at  another  season  in  the  tropics,  a  long  period  of 
ground  frosts,  and  day  temperatures  in  the  forties  and  fifties.  At  this  time 
the  thaw  and  the  rains  swell  the  big  Midwest  rivers  into  floods  which 
devastate  the  countryside  far  down  the  rivers  and  outside  the  region  and 
drown  or  render  homeless  hundreds  and  sometimes  thousands  of  people. 

This  inclement  spell  generally  lasts  well  into  May  or  even  the  begin- 
ning of  June  —  making  both  the  fierce  and  the  milder  portions  of  winter 
into  one  season  of  six  or  seven  months'  duration.  Then,  the  trees  and  plants 
and  birds  and  animals  having  crept  gradually  and  imperceptibly  into  a 
chill,  bedraggled  version  of  spring,  suddenly  the  gales  abate  overnight. 
Meanwhile  the  sun  has  long  been  fooling  everyone  by  clambering  stoically 
up  to  the  summit  of  the  heavens  for  almost  half  the  year,  but  with  benefit 
of  light  alone.  Equally  suddenly  he  now  explodes  in  heat  ranging  between 
80°  and  100°.  .  .  .  Frosts  in  May,  100°  in  June,  are  more  regular  than 


A  Number  of  Things  263 

irregular.  Flowers,  shrubs,  birds,  and  mankind  drink  in  the  sun  for  an 
ecstatic  week  or  two;  the  grass  and  the  leaves  are  spring-green  for  only 
two  or  three  weeks  in  the  year;  and  then  "summer  has  set  in  with  its  usual 
severity." 

"Severity"  is  the  word.  When  the  summer  heavens  are  not  as  brass, 
which  they  are  for  periods  of  a  few  days  and  often  for  weeks  at  a  time, 
they  pile  up  with  majestic  and  terrifying  cumulations  of  rain  and  thun- 
dercloud. The  summer  storms  provide,  with  the  star-spangled  moonless 
nights  of  winter  and  fall,  the  most  majestic  display  of  the  Midwest  heavens 
in  the  entire  year.  Then  the  Midwest  becomes  tropical.  Nowhere  in  the 
so-called  temperate  zone  —  from  which  I  think  the  Midwest  should  be 
forever  excluded  —  do  you  encounter  such  thunder  and  lightning,  such 
torrential  rains,  such  an  opening  of  the  fountains  of  the  great  deep.  The 
temperature  often  does  not  fall.  Instead  a  steamy,  clammy  heat  pervades 
everything.  The  storms  are  over  as  quickly  as  they  begin,  but  meanwhile 
much  of  the  topsoil  in  garden  and  field  alike  has  gone  down  to  the  rivers 
and  oceans  —  unless  the  owner  has  level  land,  or  has  drained,  terraced, 
or  plowed  by  contour,  or  repaired  the  gullies  on  his  land.  Out  comes  the 
sun  again  and  with  methodical  cynicism  proceeds  to  bake  the  remaining 
topsoil  to  terra  cotta.  This  then  cracks  into  new  fissures,  eagerly  expecting 
the  next  waterspout  to  widen  them. 

The  dust,  too,  comes  from  the  topsoil,  whipped  up  in  the  remoter  areas 
of  the  Midwest  by  the  little  embryonic  "twisters"  or  whirlwinds  which, 
drunkenly,  waltz  across  the  fields  like  pillars  of  cloud  by  day,  or  blown 
off  by  the  sudden  blasts  which  precede  and  follow  the  savage  summer 
storms. 

In  the  country  the  summer  means  dust:  dust  which  permitted,  and  in 
many  parts  still  permits,  the  poorer  children  to  walk  safely  and  comfortably 
barefoot  into  the  pages  of  the  Midwest's  folklore,  thus  establishing  an 
almost  necessary  qualification  for  the  childhood  of  midwestern  presidential 
candidates.  The  sidewalks  of  the  towns  in  summer  are  as  uncomfortable 
to  rapidly  tiring  feet  in  all-too-light  footgear  as  they  are  in  winter  to 
ankles,  when  the  surface  is  knobbed  and  craggy  with  black  ice. 

In  high  summer  come  the  insects:  flies,  mosquitoes,  winged  bugs  of 
every  shape  and  color  —  all  of  them  "bigger  and  better"  than  in  Europe  — 
which  necessitate  the  ubiquitous  wire-screen  doors  and  windows.  This 
also  necessitates  the  semi-annual  chore  of  paterfamilias,  who  has  to  put 
the  screens  up  and  take  them  down  —  unless  he  is  one  of  the  five  per  cent 
who  live  in  town  apartments  offering  janitor  service  or  are  rich  enough 
to  employ  gardeners  or  hired  men.  It  is  impossible  to  sit  in  a  Midwest 
garden  in  summer  because  of  the  insects,  except  for  two  weeks  in  May  or 
June. 

Summer,  too,  conditions  the  household  appliances:  iceboxes;  that  figure 
of  smoking-room  folklore,  and  favorite  of  all  children,  the  iceman;  auto- 
matic refrigerators,  which  betray  their  origin  by  still  being  called  ice- 


264  The  Arch  of  Experience 

boxes;  and  the  new  deep-freeze  repository  either  at  home  or  at  a  central 
store  of  private  lockers.  Suburban  and  country  folk  take  to  that  most 
civilized  institution  of  the  Midwest  summer,  the  sleeping  porch,  wire- 
screened  on  three  sides.  But  even  then  the  nights  are  treacherous  for 
parent  and  child  alike.  Frequently  the  tropical  storms  break  in  the  wee, 
sma'  hours;  the  rain  is  blown  in;  the  lightning  and  thunder  wake  the 
sleeper;  and  what  begins  as  a  welcome  drop  in  temperature  for  man  and 
beast  quickly  degenerates  into  a  deathtrap  by  way  of  pleurisy  or  pneu- 
monia. The  temperature  first  yields,  then  falls,  then  drops,  then  plummets 
downward.  Again  paterfamilias  or  materfamilias  plods  around,  this  time 
closing  windows  and  covering  the  awakened  children.  In  the  morning, 
heavy-lidded  and  loath  to  part  from  sleep,  they  find  the  sun  beating  down 
with  refreshed  zeal  upon  a  porch  well  on  the  way  to  becoming  a  Black 
Hole  of  Calcutta. 

When  storms  do  not  vary  the  monotony  of  heat  and  humidity,  night 
succeeds  night  in  a  remorselessly  growing  tedium  of  rising  temperature, 
and  sleep  comes  ever  more  and  more  slowly  to  a  humanity  already  ex- 
hausted, worn,  and  dehydrated  by  the  rigors  of  successive  brazen  days. 
What  winds  or  breezes  then  blow  come  from  the  Great  Plains  to  the 
west,  sweeping  across  half-parched  prairies,  more  suggestive  of  a  prairie 
fire  than  of  the  frolic  wind  that  breathes  the  spring  or  summer's  gentle 
zephyr. 

Another  trick  of  the  Midwest  summer  and  early  fall  is  to  bring  out  the 
grasses  and  weeds  whose  pollination  causes  thousands  of  sufferers  from 
hay  fever  and  other  allergies  to  spend  agonizing  days  and  weeks.  The 
newspapers  print  the  day's  pollen  count  on  the  front  page  —  sure  sign  of 
its  general  importance!  The  worst  sufferers  can  be  seen  wearing  a  kind 
of  gas  mask  that  makes  them  look  like  Martians.  Those  prone  to  the 
ubiquitous  sinus  trouble  are  also  among  the  sufferers.  Thus  is  the  prairie 
revenged  on  the  children  of  its  destroyers! 

Nor  is  there  in  the  Midwest  summer  the  purifying  influence  and  refresh- 
ing ozone  of  the  sea.  No  one  born  in  England  is  more  than  sixty  miles 
from  sea  water;  so  on  this  point  I  am,  though  trying  not  to  be,  a  prejudiced 
witness.  But  the  great  and  smaller  lakes  and  rivers  of  the  Midwest  certainly 
do  not  perform  what  Keats  called  the  "task  of  pure  ablution"  about  their 
shores.  Quite  the  contrary.  The  cities  often  empty  their  sewage,  fully  or 
not  so  fully  treated,  into  these  lakes  and  rivers,  with  results,  down-current, 
that  make  the  visitor  wonder  not  so  much  at  the  widespread  outbreaks 
of  disease,  which  often  become  epidemics,  as  at  the  authorities'  ability 
to  keep  them  within  any  bounds  at  all.  Nature  is  kind;  the  Midwest  and 
its  waterways  are  vast;  man  is  puny;  and  all  animals  naturally  become 
conditioned  and  self-inoculated  in  a  given  environment.  Happily,  the  well- 
to-do  all  build  swimming  pools;  there  are  innumerable  clubs;  and  cities 
build  and  operate  pools  which  only  occasionally  have  to  be  closed  because 
of  one  epidemic  or  another. 

As  with  the  natural  water,  so  with  the  air  of  the  region:  coming  into 


A  Number  of  Things  265 

the  Midwest  from  the  seaboard  in  summer,  one  has  the  impression  that 
one  is  living  under  "that  inverted  bowl  they  call  the  sky"  the  air  of  which 
has  all  been  breathed  before.  There  is  iodine  and  many  another  property 
in  seaside  air,  and,  at  least  if  we  are  to  go  by  the  results  of  inquiries  by 
European  experts,  the  folk  and  their  cities  by  the  sea  are  on  the  whole 
healthier  than  those  deep  in  continental  interiors. 

Yet  the  Midwest  has  one  season  which,  though  only  of  two  months' 
duration,  goes  some  of  the  way  to  redress  the  overweighted  balance  of 
wicked  winters  and  savage  summers.  It  is  the  fall.  From  mid-September 
to  mid-November,  with  short  interruptions  of  chilly,  rainy  days,  the  Mid- 
west gets  its  only  temperate  period  of  the  year.  It  is  much  finer,  much 
more  beautiful,  than  what  is  conventionally  called  "Indian  summer."  The 
days  are  warm  and  the  nights  cool,  with  occasional  light  frosts  gradually 
becoming  more  intense.  The  foliage  slowly  takes  on  those  remarkable 
shades  and  colors  which  make  the  fall  in  America  and  Canada  unique  in 
the  whole  world.  "Great  clouds  along  pacific  skies"  rarely  explode  into 
the  wrathful  and  regular  thunderstorms  of  summer.  The  last  tiring  insects 
become  fewer  and  lazier.  The  skies  become  more  brightly  blue  than  at 
any  other  time  of  the  year. 

Paterfamilias  takes  down  his  screens,  puts  up  storm  windows,  and  rakes 
leaves.  The  air  is  mildly  imbued  with  the  thin  and  acrid  smell  of  wood 
smoke.  The  winds  are  tamed;  the  dust  dies  out  of  the  atmosphere;  and 
the  only  real  breezes  of  the  year  gently  rustle  the  long,  crackling,  dried-out 
leaves  of  corn  on  the  stalks.  Berries  of  all  kinds  and  colors  deck  the 
hedges  and  shrubberies.  The  very  heart  of  the  cities  becomes  finally  com- 
fortable. Over  all,  a  different  suffused  light  from  the  sloping  sun  strikes 
street  and  building,  forest  and  field,  in  a  strange  way,  throwing  shadows 
into  unexpected  places  and  illuminating  what  for  most  of  the  year  lay  in 
shadow.  The  sunsets,  always  imposing  in  the  Midwest,  now  reach  their 
majestic  climax.  Homeward-bound  commuters  see  the  red  sun  making  the 
west  look  like  that  "dark  and  bloody  ground"  whence  the  Midwest  itself 
sprang.  The  fruit  is  picked,  bottling  goes  on  in  kitchens  or  basements, 
and  late  root  vegetables  alone  are  left  in  the  fields  or  gardens.  And  so 
imperceptibly,  but  with  the  logic  of  seasons  and  Nature  and  the  pioneers' 
history,  the  Midwest  draws  toward  that  peculiarly  American  family  festival 
of  Thanksgiving,  to  the  accompaniment  of  the  first  flurries  of  new 
snow. 

Thus  the  Midwest  ends  its  year  mildly  and  with  promise,  as  if  Nature 
were  relenting  after  so  much  savagery  during  the  other  ten  months.  Being 
a  region  of  such  violent  natural  extremes,  it  is  small  wonder  that  its  people 
have  come  to  reflect  wide  extremes  in  their  individual  and  collective  char- 
acteristics. They  have  had  to  adapt  themselves  to  sudden  and  violent 
changes  of  weather.  All  they  could  do  was  to  perfect  mechanical  defenses, 
to  live  as  much  indoors  as  possible  during  the  most  extreme  three  quarters 
of  the  year,  and  "worry  through."  There  is  a  saying  in  Chicago:  "If  you 
don't  like  our  weather,  wait  ten  minutes;  it'll  change." 


Riveters     &•  Editors  of  Fortune 


"Know-how"  is  something  we  all  admire  in  a  master  workman, 
whatever  his  job  may  be.  This  explanation  of  the  worJc  of  a  riveting 
gang  has  been  often  reprinted,  for  it  is  one  of  the  best  available  ac- 
counts of  a  skilled  team  on  the  job.  Whether  it  be  as  simple  an 
operation  as  polishing  shoes  or  as  complicated  an  art  as  fly-fishing,  there 
is  know-how  involved  in  almost  everything  we  do;  and  every  one  of  us 
is  an  expert  at  some  kind  of  performance:  taking  snapshots,  building 
model  railroads,  quarterbacking  a  team,  baking  a  souffl^,  or  yo-yo.  Such 
knowledge  is  often  the  keystone  of  the  arch  of  our  experience. 

THE  MOST  CURIOUS  fact  about  a  riveter's  skill  is  that  he  is  not  one  man  but 
four:  "heater,"  "catcher,"  "bucker-up,"  and  "gun-man."  The  gang  is  the 
unit.  Riveters  are  hired  and  fired  as  gangs,  work  in  gangs,  and  learn  in 
gangs.  If  one  member  of  a  gang  is  absent  on  a  given  morning  the  entire 
gang  is  replaced.  A  gang  may  continue  to  exist  after  its  original  members 
have  all  succumbed  to  slippery  girders  or  to  the  temptations  of  life  on 
earth.  And  the  skill  of  the  gang  will  continue  with  it.  Men  overlap  each 
other  in  service  and  teach  each  other  what  they  know.  The  difference  be- 
tween a  gang  which  can  drive  525  heavy  rivets  in  a  day  and  a  gang  which 
can  drive  250  is  a  difference  of  coordination  and  smoothness.  You  learn 
how  not  to  make  mistakes  and  how  not  to  waste  time. 

The  actual  process  of  riveting  is  simple  enough  —  in  description.  Rivets 
are  carried  to  the  job  by  the  rivet  boy,  a  riveter's  apprentice  whose  ambi- 
tion it  is  to  replace  one  of  the  members  of  the  gang.  The  rivets  are  dumped 
beside  a  small  coke  furnace,  which  stands  on  a  platform  of  loose  boards 
roped  to  the  steel  girders  and  is  tended  by  the  heater.  He  wears  heavy 
clothes  to  protect  him  from  the  flying  sparks,  and  he  holds  a  pair  of  tongs 
about  a  foot  and  a  half  long  in  his  right  hand.  His  skill  appears  in  his 
knowledge  of  the  exact  time  necessary  to  heat  the  rivets.  If  he  overheats 
the  steel,  it  will  flake,  and  the  flakes  will  permit  the  rivet  to  turn  in  its 
hole.  That  rivet  will  be  condemned. 

When  the  heater  judges  that  his  rivet  is  right,  he  turns  to  the  catcher, 
who  may  be  above  or  below  him  or  50  feet  away  on  the  same  floor  with 
the  naked  girders  between.  There  is  no  means  of  handing  the  rivet  over. 
It  must  be  thrown.  And  it  must  be  accurately  thrown.  The  catcher  is 
armed  with  a  battered  tin  can  with  which  to  catch  the  red-hot  steel. 

The  catcher's  position  is  not  exactly  one  which  a  sportsman  catching 
rivets  for  pleasure  would  choose.  He  stands  upon  a  narrow  platform  of 
loose  planks  near  the  connection  upon  which  the  gang  is  at  work.  If  he 
moves  more  than  a  step  or  two,  or  loses  his  balance,  he  is  gone.  And  if  he 

Reprinted  from  the  October,  1930,  issue  of  Fortune  magazine  by  special  permission 
of  the  editors.  Copyright,  1930,  Time  Inc. 

266 


A  Number  of  Things  267 

lets  the  rivet  pass,  it  is  capable  of  drilling  a  man's  skull  500  feet  below  as 
neatly  as  a  shank  of  shrapnel.  Why  more  rivets  do  not  fall  is  the  great 
mystery  of  skyscraper  construction.  The  only  reasonable  explanation 
offered  to  date  is  the  reply  of  an  erector's  foreman  who  was  asked  what 
would  happen  if  a  catcher  let  a  rivet  go  by  while  the  streets  below  were 
crowded.  "Well,"  said  the  foreman,  "he's  not  supposed  to." 

There  is  practically  no  exchange  of  words  among  riveters.  They  seem 
averse  to  speech  in  any  form.  The  catcher  faces  the  heater.  He  holds  his 
tin  can  up.  The  heater  swings  his  tongs,  releasing  one  handle.  The  red 
iron  arcs  through  the  air  in  one  of  those  parabolas  so  much  admired  by  the 
stenographers  in  the  neighboring  windows.  And  the  tin  can  clanks. 

The  catcher  picks  the  rivet  out  of  his  can  with  a  pair  of  tongs  and  rams 
it  into  the  rivet  hole.  Then  the  bucker-up  braces  himself  with  his  dolly 
bar,  a  short  heavy  bar  of  steel,  against  the  capped  end  of  the  rivet.  On 
outside  wall  work  he  is  sometimes  obliged  to  hold  on  by  one  elbow  with 
his  weight  out  over  the  street  and  the  jar  of  the  riveting  shaking  his 
precarious  balance.  And  the  gun-man  lifts  his  pneumatic  hammer  to  the 
rivet's  other  end. 

The  gun-man's  work  is  the  hardest,  physically.  The  hammers  weigh 
about  35  pounds.  They  must  be  held  against  the  rivet  end  with  the  gun- 
man's entire  strength,  for  a  period  of  40  to  60  seconds.  And  the  concussion 
to  the  ears  and  to  the  arms  is  very  great.  The  whole  platform  shakes  and 
the  vibration  can  be  felt  down  the  column  30  stories  below. 

Riveters  work  ordinarily  eight  hours  a  day  at  a  wage  of  $15.40  a  day. 
They  are  not  employed  in  bad  or  slippery  weather,  and  they  are  not  usually 
on  the  regular  pay  roll  of  the  erectors,  but  go  from  job  to  job  following 
foremen  whom  they  like.  There  is  no  great  future  for  a  riveter. 


The  Feel    «*  Paul  Qallico 


Thirsty  as  you  may  be  for  experiences,  you  cannot  taste  all  of  them 
though  you  live  a  hundred  years.  On  the  other  hand,  you  cannot  prop- 
erly know  any  experience  without  yourself  having  participated  actively 
in  events.  A  certain  amount  of  participation,  a  generous  addition  of 
imagination,  and  one  can  understand,  or  "feel/'  experiences  in  fields  in 
which  one  is  a  complete  amateur.  How  this  happens  is  Gallico's  sub- 
ject. Of  what  experiences  can  you  write  thus,  from  the  inside? 

A  CHILD  wandering  through  a  department  store  with  its  mother,  is  ad- 
monished over  and  over  again  not  to  touch  things.   Mother  is  convinced 

Reprinted  from  Farewell  to  Sport  by  Paul  Gallico,  by  permission  of  Alfred  A.  Knopf, 
Inc.   Copyright,  1938,  by  Paul  Gallico.   Pp.  287-298. 


268  The  Arch  of  Experience 

that  the  child  only  does  it  to  annoy  or  because  it  is  a  child,  and  usually 
hasn't  the  vaguest  inkling  of  the  fact  that  Junior  is  "touching"  because  he 
is  a  little  blotter  soaking  up  information  and  knowledge,  and  "feel"  is  an 
important  adjunct  to  seeing.  Adults  are  exactly  the  same,  in  a  measure,  as 
you  may  ascertain  when  some  new  gadget  or  article  is  produced  for  inspec- 
tion. The  average  person  says:  "Here,  let  me  see  that,"  and  holds  out  his 
hand.  He  doesn't  mean  "see,"  because  he  is  already  seeing  it.  What  he 
means  is  that  he  wants  to  get  it  into  his  hands  and  feel  it  so  as  to  become 
better  acquainted. 

...  I  do  not  insist  that  a  curiosity  and  capacity  for  feeling  sports  is  neces- 
sary to  be  a  successful  writer,  but  it  is  fairly  obvious  that  a  man  who  has 
been  tapped  on  the  chin  with  five  fingers  wrapped  up  in  a  leather  boxing 
glove  and  propelled  by  the  arm  of  an  expert  knows  more  about. that  particular 
sensation  than  one  who  has  not,  always  provided  he  has  the  gift  of  ex- 
pressing himself.  I  once  inquired  of  a  heavyweight  prizefighter  by  the 
name  of  King  Levinsky,  in  a  radio  interview,  what  it  felt  like  to  be  hit  on 
the  chin  by  Joe  Louis,  the  King  having  just  acquired  that  experience  with 
rather  disastrous  results.  Levinsky  considered  the  matter  for  a  moment  and 
then  reported:  "It  don't  feel  like  nuttin',"  but  added  that  for  a  long  while 
afterwards  he  felt  as  though  he  were  "in  a  transom." 

I  was  always  a  child  who  touched  things  and  I  have  always  had  a  tre- 
mendous curiosity  with  regard  to  sensation.  If  I  knew  what  playing  a 
game  felt  like,  particularly  against  or  in  the  company  of  experts,  I  was 
better  equipped  to  write  about  the  playing  of  it  and  the  problems  of  the 
men  and  women  who  took  part  in  it.  And  so,  at  one  time  or  another,  I 
have  tried  them  all,  football,  baseball,  boxing,  riding,  shooting,  swimming, 
squash,  handball,  fencing,  driving,  flying,  both  land  and  sea  planes,  rowing, 
canoeing,  skiing,  riding  a  bicycle,  ice-skating,  roller-skating,  tennis,  golf, 
archery,  basketball,  running,  both  the  hundred-yard  dash  and  the  mile,  the 
high  jump  and  shot  put,  badminton,  angling,  deep-sea,  stream-,  and  surf- 
casting,  billiards  and  bowling,  motorboating  and  wrestling,  besides  riding 
as  a  passenger  with  the  fastest  men  on  land  and  water  and  in  the  air,  to  see 
what  it  felt  like.  Most  of  them  I  dabbled  in  as  a  youngster  going  through 
school  and  college,  and  others,  like  piloting  a  plane,  squash,  fencing,  and 
skiing,  I  took  up  after  I  was  old  enough  to  know  better,  purely  to  get  the 
feeling  of  what  they  were  like. 

None  of  these  things  can  I  do  well,  but  I  never  cared  about  becoming  an 
expert,  and  besides,  there  wasn't  time.  But  there  is  only  one  way  to  find  out 
accurately  human  sensations  in  a  ship  two  or  three  thousand  feet  up  when 
the  motor  quits,  and  that  is  actually  to  experience  that  gone  feeling  at  the 
pit  of  the  stomach  and  the  sharp  tingling  of  the  skin  from  head  to  foot, 
followed  by  a  sudden  amazing  sharpness  of  vision,  clear-sightedness,  and 
coolness  that  you  never  knew  you  possessed  as  you  find  the  question  of  life 
or  death  completely  in  your  own  hands,  It  is  not  the  "you"  that  you  know, 
but  somebody  else,  a  stranger,  who  noses  the  ship  down,  circles,  fastens 


A  Number  of  Things  269 

upon  the  one  best  spot  to  sit  down,  pushes  or  pulls  buttons  to  try  to  get 
her  started  again,  and  finally  drops  her  in,  safe  and  sound.  And  it  is  only 
by  such  experience  that  you  learn  likewise  of  the  sudden  weakness  that  hits 
you  right  at  the  back  of  the  knees  after  you  have  climbed  out  and  started 
to  walk  around  her  and  that  comes  close  to  knocking  you  flat  as  for  the 
first  time  since  the  engine  quit  its  soothing  drone  you  think  of  destruction 
and  sudden  death. 

Often  my  courage  has  failed  me  and  I  have  funked  completely,  such  as 
the  time  I  went  up  to  the  top  of  the  thirty-foot  Olympic  diving-tower  at 
Jones  Beach,  Long  Island,  during  the  competitions,  to  see  what  it  was  like 
to  dive  from  that  height,  and  wound  up  crawling  away  from  the  edge  on 
hands  and  knees,  dizzy,  scared,  and  a  little  sick,  but  with  a  wholesome 
respect  for  the  boys  and  girls  who  hurled  themselves  through  the  air  and 
down  through  the  tough  skin  of  the  water  from  that  awful  height.  At  other 
times  sheer  ignorance  of  what  I  was  getting  into  has  led  me  into  tight  spots 
such  as  the  time  I  came  down  the  Olympic  ski  run  from  the  top  of  the 
Kreuzeck,  six  thousand  feet  above  Garmisch-Partenkirchen,  after  having 
been  on  skis  but  once  before  in  snow  and  for  the  rest  had  no  more  than  a 
dozen  lessons  on  an  indoor  artificial  slide  in  a  New  York  department  store. 
At  one  point  my  legs,  untrained,  got  so  tired  that  I  couldn't  stem  (brake) 
any  more,  and  I  lost  control  and  went  full  tilt  and  all  out,  down  a  three-foot 
twisting  path  cut  out  of  the  side  of  the  mountain,  with  a  two-thousand-foot 
abyss  on  the  left  and  the  mountain  itself  on  the  right.  That  was  probably 
the  most  scared  I  have  ever  been,  and  I  scare  fast  and  often.  I  remember 
giving  myself  up  for  lost  and  wondering  how  long  it  would  take  them  to 
retrieve  my  body  and  whether  I  should  be  still  alive.  In  the  meantime  the 
speed  of  the  descent  was  increasing.  Somehow  I  was  keeping  my  feet  and 
negotiating  turns,  how  I  will  never  know,  until  suddenly  the  narrow  patch 
opened  out  into  a  wide,  steep  stretch  of  slope  with  a  rise  at  the  other  end, 
and  that  part  of  the  journey  was  over. 

By  some  miracle  I  got  to  the  bottom  of  the  run  uninjured,  having  made 
most  of  the  trip  down  the  icy,  perpendicular  slopes  on  the  flat  of  my  back. 
It  was  the  thrill  and  scare  of  a  lifetime,  and  to  date  no  one  has  been  able  to 
persuade  me  to  try  a  jump.  I  know  when  to  stop.  After  all,  I  am  entitled  to 
rely  upon  my  imagination  for  something.  But  when  it  was  all  over  and  I 
found  myself  still  whole,  it  was  also  distinctly  worth  while  to  have  learned 
what  is  required  of  a  ski  runner  in  the  breakneck  Ahfahrt  or  downhill  race, 
or  the  difficult  slalom.  Five  days  later,  when  I  climbed  laboriously  ( still  on 
skis)  halfway  up  that  Alp  and  watched  the  Olympic  downhill  racers 
hurtling  down  the  perilous,  ice-covered,  and  nearly  perpendicular  Steil- 
hang,  I  knew  that  I  was  looking  at  a  great  group  of  athletes  who,  for  one 
thing,  did  not  know  the  meaning  of  the  word  "fear."  The  slope  was  studded 
with  small  pine  trees  and  rocks,  but  half  of  the  field  gained  precious  sec- 
onds by  hitting  that  slope  all  out,  with  complete  contempt  for  disaster 
rushing  up  at  them  at  a  speed  often  better  than  sixty  miles  an  hour.  And 


270  The  Arch  of  Experience 

when  an  unfortunate  Czech  skidded  off  the  course  at  the  bottom  of  the 
slope  and  into  a  pile  of  rope  and  got  himself  snarled  up  as  helpless  as  a 
fly  in  a  spider's  web,  it  was  a  story  that  I  could  write  from  the  heart.  I 
had  spent  ten  minutes  getting  myself  untangled  after  a  fall,  without  any 
rope  to  add  to  the  difficulties.  It  seems  that  I  couldn't  find  where  my  left 
leg  ended  and  one  more  ski  than  I  had  originally  donned  seemed  to  be  in- 
volved somehow.  Only  a  person  who  has  been  on  those  fiendish  runners 
knows  the  sensation. 

It  all  began  back  in  1922  when  I  was  a  cub  sports-writer  and  consumed 
with  more  curiosity  than  was  good  for  my  health.  I  had  seen  my  first 
professional  prizefights  and  wondered  at  the  curious  behavior  of  men  under 
the  stress  of  blows,  the  sudden  checking  and  the  beginning  of  a  little  fall 
forward  after  a  hard  punch,  the  glazing  of  the  eyes  and  the  loss  of  loco- 
motor  control,  the  strange  actions  of  men  on  the  canvas  after  a  knockdown 
as  they  struggled  to  regain  their  senses  and  arise  on  legs  that  seemed  to 
have  turned  into  rubber.  I  had  never  been  in  any  bad  fist  fights  as  a 
youngster,  though  I  had  taken  a  little  physical  punishment  in  football,  but 
it  was  not  enough  to  complete  the  picture.  Could  one  think  under  those 
conditions? 

I  had  been  assigned  to  my  first  training-camp  coverage,  Dempsey's  at 
Saratoga  Springs,  where  he  was  preparing  for  his  famous  fight  with  Luis 
Firpo.  For  days  I  watched  him  sag  a  spar  boy  with  what  seemed  to  be  no 
more  than  a  light  cuff  on  the  neck,  or  pat  his  face  with  what  looked  like 
no  more  than  a  caressing  stroke  of  his  arm,  and  the  fellow  would  come  all 
apart  at  the  seams  and  collapse  in  a  useless  heap,  grinning  vacuously  or 
twitching  strangely.  My  burning  curiosity  got  the  better  of  prudence  and 
a  certain  reluctance  to  expose  myself  to  physical  pain.  I  asked  Dempsey 
to  permit  me  to  box  a  round  with  him.  I  had  never  boxed  before,  but  I 
was  in  good  physical  shape,  having  just  completed  a  four-year  stretch  as  a 
galley  slave  in  the  Columbia  eight-oared  shell. 

When  it  was  over  and  I  escaped  through  the  ropes,  shaking,  bleeding  a 
little  from  the  mouth,  with  rosin  dust  on  my  pants  and  a  vicious  throbbing 
in  my  head,  I  knew  all  that  there  was  to  know  about  being  hit  in  the  prize- 
ring.  It  seems  that  I  had  gone  to  an  expert  for  tuition.  I  knew  the  sensa- 
tion of  being  stalked  and  pursued  by  a  relentless,  truculent  professional 
destroyer  whose  trade  and  business  it  was  to  injure  men.  I  saw  the  quick 
flash  of  the  brown  forearm  that  precedes  the  stunning  shock  as  a  bony, 
leather-bound  fist  lands  on  cheek  or  mouth.  I  learned  more  (partly  from 
photographs  of  the  lesson,  viewed  afterwards,  one  of  which  shows  me 
ducked  under  a  vicious  left  hook,  an  act  of  which  I  never  had  the  slightest 
recollection)  about  instinctive  ducking  and  blocking  than  I  could  have  in 
ten  years  of  looking  at  prizefights,  and  I  learned,  too,  that  as  the  soldier 
never  hears  the  bullet  that  kills  him,  so  does  the  fighter  rarely,  if  ever,  see 
the  punch  that  tumbles  blackness  over  him  like  a  mantle,  with  a  tearing  rip 
as  though  the  roof  of  his  skull  were  exploding,  and  robs  him  of  his  senses. 


A  Number  of  Things  111 

There  was  just  that  —  a  ripping  in  my  head  and  then  sudden  blackness, 
and  the  next  thing  I  knew,  I  was  sitting  on  the  canvas  covering  of  the  ring 
floor  with  my  legs  collapsed  under  me,  grinning  idiotically.  How  often 
since  have  I  seen  that  same  silly,  goofy  look  on  the  faces  of  dropped  fighters 
—  and  understood  it.  I  held  onto  the  floor  with  both  hands,  because  the 
ring  and  the  audience  outside  were  making  a  complete  clockwise  revolu- 
tion, came  to  a  stop,  and  then  went  back  again  counter-clockwise.  When  I 
struggled  to  my  feet,  Jack  Kearns,  Dempsey's  manager,  was  counting  over 
me,  but  I  neither  saw  nor  heard  him  and  was  only  conscious  that  I  was  in 
a  ridiculous  position  and  that  the  thing  to  do  was  to  get  up  and  try  to 
fight  back.  The  floor  swayed  and  rocked  beneath  me  like  a  fishing  dory  in 
an  off-shore  swell,  and  it  was  a  welcome  respite  when  Dempsey  rushed  into 
a  clinch,  held  me  up,  and  whispered  into  my  ear:  "Wrestle  around  a  bit, 
son,  until  your  head  clears."  And  then  it  was  that  I  learned  what  those  little 
love-taps  to  the  back  of  the  neck  and  the  short  digs  to  the  ribs  can  mean 
to  the  groggy  pugilist  more  than  half  knocked  out.  It  is  a  murderous  game, 
and  the  fighter  who  can  escape  after  having  been  felled  by  a  lethal  blow 
has  my  admiration.  And  there,  too,  I  learned  that  there  can  be  no  sweeter 
sound  than  the  bell  that  calls  a  halt  to  hostilities. 

From  that  afternoon  on,  also,  dated  my  antipathy  for  the  spectator  at 
prizefights  who  yells:  "Come  on,  you  bum,  get  up  and  fight!  Oh,  you  big 
quitter!  Yah  yellow,  yah  yellow!"  Yellow,  eh?  It  is  all  a  man  can  do  to 
get  up  after  being  stunned  by  a  blow,  much  less  fight  back.  But  they  do  it. 
And  how  a  man  is  able  to  muster  any  further  interest  in  a  combat  after 
being  floored  with  a  blow  to  the  pit  of  the  stomach  will  always  remain  to 
me  a  miracle  of  what  the  human  animal  is  capable  of  under  stress. 

Further  experiments  were  less  painful,  but  equally  illuminating.  A  couple 
of  sets  of  tennis  with  Vinnie  Richards  taught  me  more  about  what  is  re- 
quired of  a  top-flight  tournament  tennis-player  than  I  could  have  got  out 
of  a  dozen  books  or  years  of  reporting  tennis  matches.  It  is  one  thing  to 
sit  in  a  press  box  and  write  caustically  that  Brown  played  uninspired  tennis, 
or  Black's  court  covering  was  faulty  and  that  his  frequent  errors  cost  him 
the  set.  It  is  quite  another  to  stand  across  the  net  at  the  back  of  a  service 
court  and  try  to  get  your  racket  on  a  service  that  is  so  fast  that  the  ear  can 
hardly  detect  the  interval  between  the  sound  of  the  server's  bat  hitting  the 
ball  and  the  ball  striking  the  court.  Tournament  tennis  is  a  different  game 
from  week-end  tennis.  For  one  thing,  in  average  tennis,  after  the  first  hard 
service  has  gone  into  the  net  or  out,  you  breathe  a  sigh  of  relief,  move  up 
closer  and  wait  for  the  cripple  to  come  floating  over.  In  big-time  tennis 
second  service  is  practically  as  hard  as  the  first,  with  an  additional  twist 
on  the  ball. 

It  is  impossible  to  judge  or  know  anything  about  the  speed  of  a  forehand 
drive  hit  by  a  champion  until  you  have  had  one  fired  at  you,  or,  rather, 
away  from  you,  and  you  have  made  an  attempt  to  return  it.  It  is  then  that 
you  first  realize  that  tennis  is  played  more  with  the  head  than  with  the 


272  The  Arch  of  Experience 

arms  and  the  legs.  The  fastest  player  in  the  world  cannot  get  to  a  drive  to 
return  it  if  he  hasn't  thought  correctly,  guessed  its  direction,  and  antici- 
pated it  by  a  fraction  of  a  second. 

There  was  golf  with  Bob  Jones  and  Gene  Sarazen  and  Tommy  Armour, 
little  Cruickshank  and  Johnny  Farrell,  and  Diegel  and  other  professionals; 
and  experiments  at  trying  to  keep  up  in  the  water  with  Johnny  Weissmuller, 
Helene  Madison,  and  Eleanor  Holm,  attempts  to  catch  football  passes 
thrown  by  Benny  Friedman.  Nobody  actually  plays  golf  until  he  has  ac- 
quired the  technical  perfection  to  be  able  to  hit  the  ball  accurately,  high, 
low,  hooked  or  faded  and  placed.  And  nobody  knows  what  real  golf  is 
like  until  he  has  played  around  with  a  professional  and  seen  him  play,  not 
the  ball,  but  the  course,  the  roll  of  the  land,  the  hazards,  the  wind,  and 
the  texture  of  the  greens  and  the  fairways.  It  looks  like  showmanship 
when  a  top-flight  golfer  plucks  a  handful  of  grass  and  lets  it  flutter  in  the 
air,  or  abandons  his  drive  to  march  two  hundred  yards  down  to  the  green 
and  look  over  the  situation.  It  isn't.  It's  golf.  The  average  player  never 
knows  or  cares  whether  he  is  putting  with  or  across  the  grain  of  a  green. 
The  professional  always  knows.  The  same  average  player  standing  on  the 
tee  is  concentrated  on  getting  the  ball  somewhere  on  the  fairway,  two 
hundred  yards  out.  The  professional  when  preparing  to  drive  is  actually 
to  all  intents  and  purposes  playing  his  second  shot.  He  means  to  place  his 
drive  so  as  to  open  up  the  green  for  his  approach.  But  you  don't  find  that 
out  until  you  have  played  around  with  them  when  they  are  relaxed  and 
not  competing,  and  listen  to  them  talk  and  plan  attacks  on  holes. 

Major-league  baseball  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  and  precise  of  all 
games,  but  you  would  never  know  it  unless  you  went  down  on  the  field 
and  got  close  to  it  and  tried  it  yourself.  For  instance,  the  distance  between 
pitcher  and  catcher  is  a  matter  of  twenty  paces,  but  it  doesn't  seem  like 
enough  when  you  don  a  catcher's  mitt  and  try  to  hold  a  pitcher  with  the 
speed  of  Dizzy  Dean  or  Dazzy  Vance.  Not  even  the  sponge  that  catchers 
wear  in  the  palm  of  the  hand  when  working  with  fast-ball  pitchers,  and  the 
bulky  mitt  are  sufficient  to  rob  the  ball  of  shock  and  sting  that  lames  your 
hand  unless  you  know  how  to  ride  with  the  throw  and  kill  some  of  its 
speed.  The  pitcher,  standing  on  his  little  elevated  mound,  looms  up 
enormously  over  you  at  that  short  distance,  and  when  he  ties  himself  into 
a  coiled  spring  preparatory  to  letting  fly,  it  requires  all  your  self-control  not 
to  break  and  run  for  safety.  And  as  for  the  things  they  can  do  with  a  base- 
ball, those  major-league  pitchers  .  .  .  !  One  way  of  finding  out  is  to  wander 
down  on  the  field  an  hour  or  so  before  game-time  when  there  is  no  pressure 
on  them,  pull  on  the  catcher's  glove,  and  try  to  hold  them. 

I  still  remember  my  complete  surprise  the  first  time  I  tried  catching  for 
a  real  curve-ball  pitcher.  He  was  a  slim,  spidery  left-hander  of  the  New 
York  Yankees,  many  years  ago,  by  the  name  of  Herb  Pennock.  He  called 
that  he  was  going  to  throw  a  fast  breaking  curve  and  warned  me  to  ex- 
pect the  ball  at  least  two  feet  outside  the  plate.  Then  he  wound  up  and 


A  Number  of  Things  273 

let  it  go,  and  that  ball  came  whistling  right  down  the  groove  for  the  center 
of  the  plate.  A  novice,  I  chose  to  believe  what  I  saw  and  not  what  I 
heard,  and  prepared  to  catch  it  where  it  was  headed  for,  a  spot  which  of 
course  it  never  reached,  because  just  in  front  of  the  rubber,  it  swerved 
sharply  to  the  right  and  passed  nearly  a  yard  from  my  glove.  I  never  had 
a  chance  to  catch  it.  That  way,  you  learn  about  the  mysterious  drop,  the 
ball  that  sails  down  the  alley  chest  high  but  which  you  must  be  prepared  to 
catch  around  your  ankles  because  of  the  sudden  dip  it  takes  at  the  end  of 
its  passage  as  though  someone  were  pulling  it  down  with  a  string.  Also  you 
find  out  about  the  queer  fade-away,  the  slow  curve,  the  fast  in-  and  out- 
shoots  that  seem  to  be  timed  almost  as  delicately  as  shrapnel,  to  burst,  or 
rather  break,  just  when  they  will  do  the  most  harm  —  namely,  at  the  mo- 
ment when  the  batter  is  swinging. 

Facing  a  big-league  pitcher  with  a  bat  on  your  shoulder  and  trying  to 
hit  his  delivery  is  another  vital  experience  in  gaining  an  understanding  of 
the  game  about  which  you  are  trying  to  write  vividly.  It  is  one  thing  to  sit 
in  the  stands  and  scream  at  a  batsman:  "Oh,  you  bum!"  for  striking  out  in 
a  pinch,  and  another  to  stand  twenty  yards  from  that  big  pitcher  and  try 
to  make  up  your  mind  in  a  hundredth  of  a  second  whether  to  hit  at  the 
offering  or  not,  where  to  swing  and  when,  not  to  mention  worrying  about 
protecting  yourself  from  the  consequences  of  being  struck  by  the  ball  that 
seems  to  be  heading  straight  for  your  skull  at  an  appalling  rate  of  speed. 
Because,  if  you  are  a  big-league  player,  you  cannot  very  well  afford  to  be 
gun-shy  and  duck  away  in  panic  from  a  ball  that  swerves  in  the  last  mo- 
ment and  breaks  perfectly  over  the  plate,  while  the  umpire  calls:  "Strike!" 
and  the  fans  jeer.  Nor  can  you  afford  to  take  a  crack  on  the  temple  from 
the  ball.  Men  have  died  from  that.  It  calls  for  undreamed-of  niceties  of 
nerve  and  judgment,  but  you  don't  find  that  out  until  you  have  stepped 
to  the  plate  cold  a  few  times  during  batting  practice  or  in  training  quar- 
ters, with  nothing  at  stake  but  the  acquisition  of  experience,  and  see  what 
a  fine  case  of  the  jumping  jitters  you  get.  Later  on,  when  you  are  writing 
your  story,  your  imagination,  backed  by  the  experience,  will  be  able  to 
supply  a  picture  of  what  the  batter  is  going  through  as  he  stands  at  the 
plate  in  the  closing  innings  of  an  important  game,  with  two  or  three  men 
on  base,  two  out,  and  his  team  behind  in  the  scoring,  and  fifty  thousand 
people  screaming  at  him. 

The  catching  and  holding  of  a  forward  pass  for  a  winning  touchdown 
on  a  cold,  wet  day  always  make  a  good  yarn,  but  you  might  get  an  even 
better  one  out  of  it  if  you  happen  to  know  from  experience  about  the 
elusive  qualities  of  a  hard,  soggy,  mud-slimed  football  rifled  through  the 
air,  as  well  as  something  about  the  exquisite  timing,  speed,  and  courage 
it  takes  to  catch  it  on  a  dead  run,  with  two  or  three  190-pound  men  reach- 
ing for  it  at  the  same  time  or  waiting  to  crash  you  as  soon  as  your  fingers 
touch  it. 

Any  football  coach  during  a  light  practice  will  let  you  go  down  the  field 


274  The  Arch  of  Experience 

and  try  to  catch  punts,  the  long,  fifty-yard  spirals  and  the  tricky,  tum- 
bling end-over-enders.  Unless  you  have  had  some  previous  experience, 
you  won't  hang  on  to  one  out  of  ten,  besides  knocking  your  fingers  out 
of  joint.  But  if  you  have  any  imagination,  thereafter  you  will  know  that 
it  calls  for  more  than  negligible  nerve  to  judge  and  hold  that  ball  and 
even  plan  to  run  with  it,  when  there  are  two  husky  ends  bearing  down 
at  full  speed,  preparing  for  a  head-on  tackle. 

In  1932  I  covered  my  first  set  of  National  Air  Races,  in  Cleveland,  and 
immediately  decided  that  I  had  to  learn  how  to  fly  to  find  out  what  that 
felt  like.  Riding  as  a  passenger  isn't  flying.  Being  up  there  all  alone  at 
the  controls  of  a  ship  is.  And  at  the  same  time  began  a  series  of  investiga- 
tions into  the  "feel"  of  the  mechanized  sports  to  see  what  they  were  all 
about  and  the  qualities  of  mentality,  nerve,  and  physique  they  called  for 
from  their  participants.  These  included  a  ride  with  Gar  Wood  in  his 
latest  and  fastest  speedboat,  Mm  America  X,  in  which  for  the  first  time 
he  pulled  the  throttle  wide  open  on  the  Detroit  River  straightaway;  a  trip 
with  the  Indianapolis  Speedway  driver  Cliff  Bergere,  around  the  famous 
brick  raceway;  and  a  flip  with  Lieutenant  Al  Williams,  one  time  U.  S. 
Schneider  Cup  race  pilot. 

I  was  scared  with  Wood,  who  drove  me  at  127  miles  an  hour,  jounced, 
shaken,  vibrated,  choked  with  fumes  from  the  exhausts,  behind  which  I  sat 
hanging  on  desperately  to  the  throttle  bar,  which  after  a  while  got  too  hot 
to  hold.  I  was  on  a  plank  between  Wood  and  his  mechanic,  Johnson,  and 
thought  that  my  last  moment  had  come.  I  was  still  more  scared  when  Cliff 
Bergere  hit  126  on  the  Indianapolis  straightaways  in  the  tiny  racing  car 
in  which  I  was  hopelessly  wedged,  and  after  the  first  couple  of  rounds 
quite  resigned  to  die  and  convinced  that  I  should.  But  I  think  the  most 
scared  I  have  ever  been  while  moving  fast  was  during  a  ride  I  took  in 
the  cab  of  a  locomotive  on  the  straight,  level  stretch  between  Fort  Wayne, 
Indiana,  and  Chicago,  where  for  a  time  we  hit  90  miles  per  hour,  which  of 
course  is  no  speed  at  all.  But  nobody  who  rides  in  the  comfortable  Pull- 
man coaches  has  any  idea  of  the  didoes  cut  up  by  a  locomotive  in  a  hurry, 
or  the  thrill  of  pelting  through  a  small  town,  all  out  and  wide  open,  includ- 
ing the  crossing  of  some  thirty  or  forty  frogs  and  switches,  all  of  which 
must  be  set  right.  But  that  wasn't  sport.  That  was  just  plain  excitement. 

I  have  never  regretted  these  researches.  Now  that  they  are  over,  there 
isn't  enough  money  to  make  me  do  them  again.  But  they  paid  me  divi- 
dends, I  figured.  During  the  great  Thompson  Speed  Trophy  race  for  land 
planes  at  Cleveland  in  1935,  Captain  Roscoe  Turner  was  some  eight  or 
nine  miles  in  the  lead  in  his  big  golden,  low-wing,  speed  monoplane. 
Suddenly,  coming  into  the  straightaway  in  front  of  the  grandstands,  buzz- 
ing along  at  280  miles  an  hour  like  an  angry  hornet,  a  streamer  of  thick, 
black  smoke  burst  from  the  engine  cowling  and  trailed  back  behind  the 
ship.  Turner  pulled  up  immediately,  using  his  forward  speed  to  gain  all 
the  altitude  possible,  turned  and  got  back  to  the  edge  of  the  field,  still 


A  Number  of  Things  275 

pouring  out  that  evil  black  smoke.  Then  he  cut  his  switch,  dipped  her 
nose  down,  landed  with  a  bounce  and  a  bump,  and  rolled  up  to  the  line 
in  a  perfect  stop.  The  crowd  gave  him  a  great  cheer  as  he  climbed  out 
of  the  oil-spattered  machine,  but  it  was  a  cheer  of  sympathy  because 
he  had  lost  the  race  after  having  been  so  far  in  the  lead  that  had  he  con- 
tinued he  could  not  possibly  have  been  overtaken. 

There  was  that  story,  but  there  was  a  better  one  too.  Only  the  pilots 
on  the  field,  all  of  them  white  around  the  lips  and  wiping  from  their 
faces  a  sweat  not  due  to  the  oppressive  summer  heat,  knew  that  they 
were  looking  at  a  man  who  from  that  time  on,  to  use  their  own  expression, 
was  living  on  borrowed  time.  It  isn't  often  when  a  Thompson  Trophy 
racer  with  a  landing  speed  of  around  eighty  to  ninety  miles  an  hour  goes 
haywire  in  the  air,  that  the  pilot  is  able  to  climb  out  of  the  cockpit  and 
walk  away  from  his  machine.  From  the  time  of  that  first  burst  of  smoke 
until  the  wheels  touched  the  ground  and  stayed  there,  he  was  a  hundred- 
to-one  shot  to  live.  To  the  initiated,  those  dreadful  moments  were  laden 
with  suspense  and  horror.  Inside  that  contraption  was  a  human  being 
who  any  moment  might  be  burned  to  a  horrible,  twisted  cinder,  or  smashed 
into  the  ground  beyond  all  recognition,  a  human  being  who  was  cool, 
gallant,  and  fighting  desperately.  Every  man  and  woman  on  the  field 
who  had  ever  been  in  trouble  in  the  air  was  living  those  awful  seconds 
with  him  in  terror  and  suspense.  I,  too,  was  able  to  experience  it.  That  is 
what  makes  getting  the  "feel"  of  things  distinctly  worth  while. 


Shooting  an  Elephant    *> 

Qeorge  Orwell  •  iP03-iP50 


No,  shooting  an  elephant  is  not  an  experience  you  would  normally 
have,  but  that  is  not  the  point  of  our  including  this  selection.  There 
are  experiences  which  implicate  within  themselves  an  entire  way  of 
life,  a  class  point  of  view,  where  one's  individual  will  and  desire  must 
yield  to  the  larger  social  pressure.  "Shooting  an  Elephant"  does  not  say 
so  —  it  is  not  an  essay  —  but  it  condemns  an  imperialistic  policy  just 
as  surely  as  Jonathan  Swift's  ironic  essay,  "A  Modest  Proposal,"  con- 
demned the  brutality  and  injustice  of  the  English  crown. 

IN  MOULMEIN,  in  Lower  Burma,  I  was  hated  by  large  numbers  of  people 
—  the  only  time  in  my  life  that  I  have  been  important  enough  for  this  to 

From  Shooting  an  Elephant  and  Other  Essays  by  George  Orwell,  copyright,  1950,  by 
Sonia  Brownell  Orwell.  Reprinted  by  permission  of  Harcourt,  Brace  and  Company,  Inc., 
and  of  Martin  Seeker  &  Warburg,  Ltd 


276  The  Arch  of  Experience 

happen  to  me.  I  was  sub-divisional  police  officer  of  the  town,  and  in  an 
aimless,  petty  kind  of  way  anti-European  feeling  was  very  bitter.  No 
one  had  the  guts  to  raise  a  riot,  but  if  a  European  woman  went  through 
the  bazaars  alone  somebody  would  probably  spit  betel  juice  over  her  dress. 
As  a  police  officer  I  was  an  obvious  target  and  was  baited  whenever  it 
seemed  safe  to  do  so.  When  a  nimble  Burman  tripped  me  up  on  the  foot- 
ball field  and  the  referee  (another  Burman)  looked  the  other  way,  the 
crowd  yelled  with  hideous  laughter.  This  happened  more  than  once.  In 
the  end  the  sneering  yellow  faces  of  young  men  that  met  me  everywhere, 
the  insults  hooted  after  me  when  I  was  at  a  safe  distance,  got  badly  on 
my  nerves.  The  young  Buddhist  priests  were  the  worst  of  all.  There  were 
several  thousands  of  them  in  the  town  and  none  of  them  seemed  to  have 
anything  to  do  except  stand  on  street  corners  and  jeer  at  Europeans. 

All  this  was  perplexing  and  upsetting.  For  at  that  time  I  had  already 
made  up  my  mind  that  imperialism  was  an  evil  thing  and  the  sooner  I 
chucked  up  my  job  and  got  out  of  it  the  better.  Theoretically  —  and 
secretly,  of  course  —  I  was  all  for  the  Burmese  and  all  against  their  op- 
pressors, the  British.  As  for  the  job  I  was  doing,  I  hated  it  more  bitterly 
than  I  can  perhaps  make  clear.  In  a  job  like  that  you  see  the  dirty  work 
of  Empire  at  close  quarters.  The  wretched  prisoners  huddling  in  the 
stinking  cages  of  the  lock-ups,  the  grey,  cowed  faces  of  the  long-term 
convicts,  the  scarred  buttocks  of  the  men  who  had  been  flogged  with 
bamboos  —  all  these  oppressed  me  with  an  intolerable  sense  of  guilt.  But 
I  could  get  nothing  into  perspective.  I  was  young  and  ill-educated  and 
I  had  had  to  think  out  my  problems  in  the  utter  silence  that  is  imposed 
on  every  Englishman  in  the  East.  I  did  not  even  know  that  the  British 
Empire  is  dying,  still  less  did  I  know  that  it  is  a  great  deal  better  than 
the  younger  empires  that  are  going  to  supplant  it.  All  I  knew  was  that 
I  was  stuck  between  my  hatred  of  the  empire  I  served  and  my  rage  against 
the  evil-spirited  little  beasts  who  tried  to  make  my  job  impossible.  With 
one  part  of  my  mind  I  thought  of  the  British  Raj  as  an  unbreakable  tryanny, 
as  something  clamped  down,  in  saecula  saeculorum,  upon  the  will  of 
prostrate  peoples;  with  another  part  I  thought  that  the  greatest  joy  in  the 
world  would  be  to  drive  a  bayonet  into  a  Buddhist  priest's  guts.  Feelings 
like  these  are  the  normal  by-products  of  imperialism;  ask  any  Anglo-Indian 
official,  if  you  can  catch  him  off  duty. 

One  day  something  happened  which  in  a  roundabout  way  was  enlighten- 
ing. It  was  a  tiny  incident  in  itself,  but  it  gave  me  a  better  glimpse  than 
I  had  had  before  of  the  real  nature  of  imperialism  —  the  real  motives  for 
which  despotic  governments  act.  Early  one  morning  the  sub-inspector 
at  a  police  station  the  other  end  of  the  town  rang  me  up  on  the  'phone  and 
said  that  an  elephant  was  ravaging  the  bazaar.  Would  I  please  come  and 
do  something  about  it?  I  did  not  know  what  I  could  do,  but  I  wanted 
to  see  what  was  happening  and  I  got  on  to  a  pony  and  started  out.  I  took 
my  rifle,  an  old  .44  Winchester  an<J  much  too  small  to  kill  an  elephant, 


A  Number  of  Things  277 

but  I  thought  the  noise  might  be  useful  in  terrorem.  Various  Burmans 
stopped  me  on  the  way  and  told  me  about  the  elephant's  doings.  It  was 
not,  of  course,  a  wild  elephant,  but  a  tame  one  which  had  gone  "must." 
It  had  been  chained  up,  as  tame  elephants  always  are  when  their  attack  of 
"must"  is  due,  but  on  the  previous  night  it  had  broken  its  chain  and 
escaped.  Its  mahout,  the  only  person  who  could  manage  it  when  it  was  in 
that  state,  had  set  out  in  pursuit,  but  had  taken  the  wrong  direction  and 
was  now  twelve  hours'  journey  away,  and  in  the  morning  the  elephant  had 
suddenly  reappeared  in  the  town.  The  Burmese  population  had  no 
weapons  and  were  quite  helpless  against  it.  It  had  already  destroyed  some- 
body's bamboo  hut,  killed  a  cow  and  raided  some  fruit-stalls  and  devoured 
the  stock;  also  it  had  met  the  municipal  rubbish  van  and,  when  the  driver 
jumped  out  and  took  to  his  heels,  had  turned  the  van  over  and  inflicted 
violences  upon  it. 

The  Burmese  sub-inspector  and  some  Indian  constables  were  waiting 
for  me  in  the  quarter  where  the  elephant  had  been  seen.  It  was  a  very 
poor  quarter,  a  labyrinth  of  squalid  bamboo  huts,  thatched  with  palm- 
leaf,  winding  all  over  a  steep  hillside.  I  remember  that  it  was  a  cloudy, 
stuffy  morning  at  the  beginning  of  the  rains.  We  began  questioning  the 
people  as  to  where  the  elephant  had  gone  and,  as  usual,  failed  to  get  any 
definite  information.  That  is  invariably  the  case  in  the  East;  a  story  always 
sounds  clear  enough  at  a  distance,  but  the  nearer  you  get  to  the  scene  of 
events  the  vaguer  it  becomes.  Some  of  the  people  said  that  the  elephant 
had  gone  in  one  direction,  some  said  that  he  had  gone  in  another,  some 
professed  not  even  to  have  heard  of  any  elephant.  I  had  almost  made  up 
my  mind  that  the  whole  story  was  a  pack  of  lies,  when  we  heard  yells  a 
little  distance  away.  There  was  a  loud,  scandalized  cry  of  "Go  away, 
childl  Go  away  this  instant!"  and  an  old  woman  with  a  switch  in  her  hand 
came  round  the  corner  of  a  hut,  violently  shooing  away  a  crowd  of  naked 
children.  Some  more  women  followed,  clicking  their  tongues  and  exclaim- 
ing; evidently  there  was  something  that  the  children  ought  not  to  have  seen. 
I  rounded  the  hut  and  saw  a  man's  dead  body  sprawling  in  the  mud. 
He  was  an  Indian,  a  black  Dravidian  coolie,  almost  naked,  and  he  could 
not  have  been  dead  many  minutes.  The  people  said  that  the  elephant 
had  come  suddenly  upon  him  round  the  corner  of  the  hut,  caught  him 
with  its  trunk,  put  its  foot  on  his  back  and  ground  him  into  the  earth. 
This  was  the  rainy  season  and  the  ground  was  soft,  and  his  face  had  scored 
a  trench  a  foot  deep  and  a  couple  of  yards  long.  He  was  lying  on  his 
belly  with  arms  crucified  and  head  sharply  twisted  to  one  side.  His  face 
was  coated  with  mud,  the  eyes  wide  open,  the  teeth  bared  and  grinning 
with  an  expression  of  unendurable  agony.  (Never  tell  me,  by  the  way, 
that  the  dead  look  peaceful.  Most  of  the  corpses  I  have  seen  looked 
devilish.)  The  friction  of  the  great  beast's  foot  had  stripped  the  skin  from 
his  back  as  neatly  as  one  skins  a  rabbit.  As  soon  as  I  saw  the  dead  man 
I  sent  an  orderly  to  a  friend's  house  nearby  to  borrow  an  elephant  rifle. 


278  The  Arch  of  Experience 

I  had  already  sent  back  the  pony,  not  wanting  it  to  go  mad  with  fright 
and  throw  me  if  it  smelt  the  elephant. 

The  orderly  came  back  in  a  few  minutes  with  a  rifle  and  five  cartridges, 
and  meanwhile  some  Burmans  had  arrived  and  told  us  that  the  elephant 
was  in  the  paddy  fields  below,  only  a  few  hundred  yards  away.  As  I 
started  forward  practically  the  whole  population  of  the  quarter  flocked 
out  of  the  houses  and  followed  me.  They  had  seen  the  rifle  and  were  all 
shouting  excitedly  that  I  was  going  to  shoot  the  elephant.  They  had  not 
shown  much  interest  in  the  elephant  when  he  was  merely  ravaging  their 
homes,  but  it  was  different  now  that  he  was  going  to  be  shot.  It  was  a 
bit  of  fun  to  them,  as  it  would  be  to  an  English  crowd;  besides  they 
wanted  the  meat.  It  made  me  vaguely  uneasy.  I  had  no  intention  of 
shooting  the  elephant  —  I  had  merely  sent  for  the  rifle  to  defend  myself 
if  necessary  —  and  it  is  always  unnerving  to  have  a  crowd  following  you. 
I  marched  down  the  hill,  looking  and  feeling  a  fool,  with  the  rifle  over 
my  shoulder  and  an  ever-growing  army  of  people  jostling  at  my  heels. 
At  the  bottom,  when  you  got  away  from  the  huts,  there  was  a  metalled 
road  and  beyond  that  a  miry  waste  of  paddy  fields  a  thousand  yards  across, 
not  yet  ploughed  but  soggy  from  the  first  rains  and  dotted  with  coarse 
grass.  The  elephant  was  standing  eight  yards  from  the  road,  his  left  side 
towards  us.  He  took  not  the  slightest  notice  of  the  crowd's  approach. 
He  was  tearing  up  bunches  of  grass,  beating  them  against  his  knees  to 
clean  them  and  stuffing  them  into  his  mouth. 

I  had  halted  on  the  road.  As  soon  as  I  saw  the  elephant  I  knew  with 
perfect  certainty  that  I  ought  not  to  shoot  him.  It  is  a  serious  matter  to 
shoot  a  working  elephant  —  it  is  comparable  to  destroying  a  huge  and 
costly  piece  of  machinery  —  and  obviously  one  ought  not  to  do  it  if  it 
can  possibly  be  avoided.  And  at  that  distance,  peacefully  eating,  the 
elephant  looked  no  more  dangerous  than  a  cow.  I  thought  then  and  I 
think  now  that  his  attack  of  "must"  was  already  passing  off;  in  which 
case  he  would  merely  wander  harmlessly  about  until  the  mahout  came 
back  and  caught  him.  Moreover,  I  did  not  in  the  least  want  to  shoot 
him.  I  decided  that  I  would  watch  him  for  a  little  while  to  make  sure 
that  he  did  not  turn  savage  again,  and  then  go  home. 

But  at  that  moment  I  glanced  round  at  the  crowd  that  had  followed  me. 
It  was  an  immense  crowd,  two  thousand  at  the  least  and  growing  every 
minute.  It  blocked  the  road  for  a  long  distance  on  either  side.  I  looked 
at  the  sea  of  yellow  faces  above  the  garish  clothes  —  faces  all  happy  and 
excited  over  this  bit  of  fun,  all  certain  that  the  elephant  was  going  to  be 
shot.  They  were  watching  me  as  they  would  watch  a  conjurer  about  to 
perform  a  trick.  They  did  not  like  me,  but  with  the  magical  rifle  in  my 
hands  I  was  momentarily  worth  watching.  And  suddenly  I  realized  that 
I  should  have  to  shoot  the  elephant  after  all.  The  people  expected  it  of 
me  and  I  had  got  to  do  it;  I  could  feel  their  two  thousand  wills  pressing 
me  forward,  irresistibly.  And  it  was  at  this  moment,  as  I  stood  there  with 


A  Number  of  Things  279 

the  rifle  in  my  hands,  that  I  first  grasped  the  hollowness,  the  futility  of 
the  white  man's  dominion  in  the  East.  Here  was  I,  the  white  man  with 
his  gun,  standing  in  front  of  the  unarmed  native  crowd  —  seemingly  the 
leading  actor  of  the  piece;  but  in  reality  I  was  only  an  absurd  puppet 
pushed  to  and  fro  by  the  will  of  those  yellow  faces  behind.  I  perceived  in 
this  moment  that  when  the  white  man  turns  tyrant  it  is  his  own  freedom 
that  he  destroys.  He  becomes  a  sort  of  hollow,  posing  dummy,  the  con- 
ventionalized figure  of  a  sahib.  For  it  is  the  condition  of  his  rule  that  he 
shall  spend  his  life  in  trying  to  impress  the  "natives,"  and  so  in  every  crisis 
he  has  got  to  do  what  the  "natives"  expect  of  him.  He  wears  a  mask, 
and  his  face  grows  to  fit  it.  I  had  got  to  shoot  the  elephant.  I  had  com- 
mitted myself  to  doing  it  when  I  sent  for  the  rifle.  A  sahib  has  got  to  act 
like  a  sahib;  he  has  got  to  appear  resolute,  to  know  his  own  mind  and 
do  definite  things.  To  come  all  that  way,  rifle  in  hand,  with  two  thousand 
people  marching  at  my  heels,  and  then  to  trail  feebly  away,  having  done 
nothing  —  no,  that  was  impossible.  The  crowd  would  laugh  at  me.  And 
my  whole  life,  every  white  man's  life  in  the  East,  was  one  long  struggle 
not  to  be  laughed  at. 

But  I  did  not  want  to  shoot  the  elephant.  I  watched  him  beating  his 
bunch  of  grass  against  his  knees,  with  that  preoccupied  grandmotherly 
air  that  elephants  have.  It  seemed  to  me  that  it  would  be  murder  to  shoot 
him.  At  that  age  I  was  not  squeamish  about  killing  animals,  but  I  had 
never  shot  an  elephant  and  never  wanted  to.  (Somehow  it  always  seems 
worse  to  kill  a  large  animal.)  Besides,  there  was  the  beast's  owner  to  be 
considered.  Alive,  the  elephant  was  worth  at  least  a  hundred  pounds; 
dead,  he  would  only  be  worth  the  value  of  his  tusks,  five  pounds,  possibly. 
But  I  had  got  to  act  quickly.  I  turned  to  some  experienced-looking  Bur- 
mans  who  had  been  there  when  we  arrived,  and  asked  them  how  the 
elephant  had  been  behaving.  They  all  said  the  same  thing:  he  took  no 
notice  of  you  if  you  left  him  alone,  but  he  might  charge  if  you  went  too 
close  to  him. 

It  was  perfectly  clear  to  me  what  I  ought  to  do.  I  ought  to  walk  up  to 
within,  say,  twenty-five  yards  of  the  elephant  and  test  his  behavior.  If 
he  charged,  I  could  shoot;  if  he  took  no  notice  of  me,  it  would  be  safe 
to  leave  him  until  the  mahout  came  back.  But  also  I  knew  that  I  was 
going  to  do  no  such  thing.  I  was  a  poor  shot  with  a  rifle  and  the  ground 
was  soft  mud  into  which  one  would  sink  at  every  step.  If  the  elephant 
charged  and  I  missed  him,  I  should  have  about  as  much  chance  as  a  toad 
under  a  steam-roller.  But  even  then  I  was  not  thinking  particularly  of  my 
own  skin,  only  of  the  watchful  yellow  faces  behind.  For  at  that  moment, 
with  the  crowd  watching  me,  I  was  not  afraid  in  the  ordinary  sense,  as  I 
would  have  been  if  I  had  been  alone.  A  white  man  mustn't  be  frightened 
in  front  of  "natives";  and  so,  in  general,  he  isn't  frightened.  The  sole 
thought  in  my  mind  was  that  if  anything  went  wrong  those  two  thousand 
Burmans  would  see  me  pursued,  caught,  trampled  on  and  reduced  to  a 


280  The  Arch  of  Experience 

grinning  corpse  like  that  Indian  up  the  hill.  And  if  that  happened  it  was 
quite  probable  that  some  of  them  would  laugh.  That  would  never  do. 
There  was  only  one  alternative.  I  shoved  the  cartridges  into  the  magazine 
and  lay  down  on  the  road  to  get  a  better  aim. 

The  crowd  grew  very  still,  and  a  deep,  low,  happy  sigh,  as  of  people 
who  see  the  theatre  curtain  go  up  at  last,  breathed  from  innumerable 
throats.  They  were  going  to  have  their  bit  of  fun  after  all.  The  rifle  was 
a  beautiful  German  thing  with  cross-hair  sights.  I  did  not  then  know  that 
in  shooting  an  elephant  one  would  shoot  to  cut  an  imaginary  bar  running 
from  ear-hole  to  ear-hole.  I  ought,  therefore,  as  the  elephant  was  side- 
ways on,  to  have  aimed  straight  at  his  ear-hole;  actually  I  aimed  several 
inches  in  front  of  this,  thinking  the  brain  would  be  further  forward. 

When  I  pulled  the  trigger  I  did  not  hear  the  bang  or  feel  the  kick  — 
one  never  does  when  a  shot  goes  home  —  but  I  heard  the  devilish  roar 
of  glee  that  went  up  from  the  crowd.  In  that  instant,  in  too  short  a  time, 
one  would  have  thought,  even  for  the  bullet  to  get  there,  a  mysterious, 
terrible  change  had  come  over  the  elephant.  He  neither  stirred  nor  fell, 
but  every  line  of  his  body  had  altered.  He  looked  suddenly  stricken, 
shrunken,  immensely  old,  as  though  the  frightful  impact  of  the  bullet 
had  paralysed  him  without  knocking  him  down.  At  last,  after  what  seemed 
a  long  time  —  it  might  have  been  five  seconds,  I  dare  say  —  he  sagged 
flabbily  to  his  knees.  His  mouth  slobbered.  An  enormous  senility  seemed 
to  have  settled  upon  him.  One  could  have  imagined  him  thousands  of 
years  old.  I  fired  again  into  the  same  spot.  At  the  second  shot  he  did  not 
collapse  but  climbed  with  desperate  slowness  to  his  feet  and  stood  weakly 
upright,  with  legs  sagging  and  head  drooping.  I  fired  a  third  time.  That 
was  the  shot  that  did  for  him.  You  could  see  the  agony  of  it  jolt  his  whole 
body  and  knock  the  last  remnant  of  strength  from  his  legs.  But  in  falling 
he  seemed  for  a  moment  to  rise,  for  as  his  hind  legs  collapsed  beneath 
him  he  seemed  to  tower  upward  like  a  huge  rock  toppling,  his  trunk 
reaching  skyward  like  a  tree.  He  trumpeted,  for  the  first  and  only  time. 
And  then  down  he  came,  his  belly  towards  me,  with  a  crash  that  seemed 
to  shake  the  ground  even  where  I  lay. 

I  got  up.  The  Burmans  were  already  racing  past  me  across  the  mud. 
It  was  obvious  that  the  elephant  would  never  rise  again,  but  he  was  not 
dead.  He  was  breathing  very  rhythmically  with  long  rattling  gasps,  his 
great  mound  of  a  side  painfully  rising  and  falling.  His  mouth  was  wide 
open  —  I  could  see  far  down  into  caverns  of  pale  pink  throat.  I  waited 
a  long  time  for  him  to  die,  but  his  breathing  did  not  weaken.  Finally  I 
fired  my  two  remaining  shots  into  the  spot  where  I  thought  his  heart  must 
be.  The  thick  blood  welled  out  of  him  like  red  velvet,  but  still  he  did 
not  die.  His  body  did  not  even  jerk  when  the  shots  hit  him,  the  tortured 
breathing  continued  without  a  pause.  He  was  dying,  very  slowly  and  in 
great  agony,  but  in  some  world  remote  from  me  where  not  even  a  bullet 
could  damage  him  further.  I  felt  that  I  had  got  to  put  an  end  to  that 


A  Number  of  Things  281 

dreadful  noise.  It  seemed  dreadful  to  see  the  great  beast  lying  there, 
powerless  to  move  and  yet  powerless  to  die,  and  not  even  to  be  able  to 
finish  him.  I  sent  back  for  my  small  rifle  and  poured  shot  after  shot  into 
his  heart  and  down  his  throat.  They  seemed  to  make  no  impression.  The 
tortured  gasps  continued  as  steadily  as  the  ticking  of  a  clock. 

In  the  end  I  could  not  stand  it  any  longer  and  went  away.  I  heard 
later  that  it  took  him  half  an  hour  to  die.  Burmans  were  bringing  dahs  and 
baskets  even  before  I  left,  and  I  was  told  they  had  stripped  his  body 
almost  to  the  bones  by  the  afternoon. 

Afterwards,  of  course,  there  were  endless  discussions  about  the  shooting 
of  the  elephant.  The  owner  was  furious,  but  he  was  only  an  Indian  and 
could  do  nothing.  Besides,  legally  I  had  done  the  right  thing,  for  a  mad 
elephant  has  to  be  killed,  like  a  mad  dog,  if  its  owner  fails  to  control  it. 
Among  the  Europeans  opinion  was  divided.  The  older  men  said  I  was 
right,  the  younger  men  said  it  was  a  damn  shame  to  shoot  an  elephant 
for  killing  a  coolie,  because  an  elephant  was  worth  more  than  any  damn 
Coringhee  coolie.  And  afterwards  I  was  very  glad  that  the  coolie  had  been 
killed;  it  put  me  legally  in  the  right  and  it  gave  me  a  sufficient  pretext  for 
shooting  the  elephant.  I  often  wondered  whether  any  of  the  others  grasped 
that  I  had  done  it  solely  to  avoid  looking  a  fool. 


Rick  Discovers  Jazz    *> 

Dorothy  TZaker  •  *P07- 


This  is  a  selection  from  the  first  chapter  of  Young  Man  With  a 
Horn,  a  novel  inspired,  the  author  says,  "by  the  music,  but  not  the 
life  of  a  great  musician,  Leon  (Bix)  Beiderbecke,  who  died  in  the  year 
1931."  "It  is  the  story  of  a  number  of  things  —  of  the  gap  between 
the  man's  musical  ability  and  his  ability  to  fit  it  to  his  own  life;  of  the 
difference  between  the  demands  of  expression  and  the  demands  of  life 
here  below;  and  finally  of  the  difference  between  good  and  bad  in  a 
native  American  art  form  —  jazz  music.  Because  there's  good  in  this 
music  and  there's  bad.  There  is  music  that  is  turned  out  sweet  in  hotel 
ballrooms  and  there  is  music  that  comes  right  out  of  the  genuine  urge 
and  doesn't  come  for  money/'  In  this  selection  Rick  Martin  and  his 
colored  friend  Smoke  Jordan  listen  to  the  music  of  Jeff  Williams  and 
his  Four  Mutts  at  the  Cotton  Club;  and  Rick,  who  has  an  inborn  feeling 
for  music  but  no  training  beyond  his  own  experiments  with  a  Mission 
piano,  gets  a  start  on  his  career  in  jazz  by  meeting  Jeff. 

Dorothy  Baker,  Young  Man  with  a  Horn  (Boston:  Houghton  Mifflin  Company,  1938), 
pp.  38-68.   Copyright,  1938,  by  Dorothy  Baker. 


282  The  Arch  of  Experience 

ONE  THING  tends  to  lead  to  another,  and  this  case  is  no  exception.  Within 
a  month  after  the  night  when  Rick  Martin  and  Smoke  Jordan  had  clasped 
hands  in  friendship  over  the  shared,  but  not  identical,  experience  of  a  first 
cigar,  Rick  became  an  habitue  of  the  Cotton  Club,  a  back-window  cus- 
tomer, but  none  the  less  a  customer.  Once  they  got  started  he  and  Smoke 
went  three  or  four  nights  a  week  to  stand  or  sit  under  the  back  window 
of  the  Cotton  Club  and  listen  to  the  music  of  Jeff  Williams  and  his  Four 
Mutts.  These  five,  none  of  them  much  older  than  twenty,  were  so  many 
gold  mines  as  far  as  the  pure  vein  of  natural  music  is  concerned.  They 
came  equipped  with  their  racial  heritage  despite  the  fact  that  they  had 
been  put  down  in  Los  Angeles,  of  all  places,  and  not,  as  Nature  must  have 
intended,  in  New  Orleans  or  Memphis. 

Smoke  and  Rick  stayed  outside  and  let  the  music  come  to  them,  and 
they  didn't  strain  their  ears,  either;  anybody  could  have  understood  that 
band  three  blocks  away.  It  wasn't  that  they  were  loud;  it  was  that  they 
were  so  firm  about  the  way  they  played,  no  halfway  measures,  nothing 
fuzzy.  They  knew  what  they  were  getting  at,  singly  and  as  a  group. 

It  didn't  take  Rick  long  to  know  what  they  were  getting  at,  right  along 
with  them.  He  had,  himself  come  equipped  with  the  same  equipment  as 
Jeff  and  his  Mutts  —  the  same  basic  need  to  make  music,  the  same  sharp 
ear  to  discover  it.  And  he  discovered  a  great  deal,  there  under  the  window 
listening  to  the  band  —  first  time  he'd  ever  really  heard  a  band  except  for 
military  ones  in  occasional  parades;  opportunities  to  hear  music  weren't 
presenting  themselves  on  every  hand  in  those  days  as  they  are  now;  those 
were  the  days  of  crystal  sets  for  the  few.  If  Rick  had  grown  up  in  the 
present  scene  he'd  probably  have  had  his  head  perpetually  inside  a  walnut 
radio  cabinet  listening  to  this  one  or  that  one  playing  a  tea  dance.  But  as 
it  was  he  had  no  chance  to  be  led  astray;  all  he  ever  heard  was  the  pure 
thing  put  out  fresh  by  the  Cotton  Club  ensemble. 

He  went  through  the  stages;  first  he  heard  the  tunes  and  they  were 
the  whole  thing.  Those  he  knew  already  he  recognized  with  intense  pleas- 
ure. "Beale  Street  Mamma,"  he'd  say  to  Smoke  at  the  end  of  the  second 
bar,  and  Smoke  would  say  sure  enough,  as  if  he'd  just  had  something 
pointed  out  to  him.  He'd  never  have  been  caught  dead  saying  how'd  you 
guess  or  any  of  the  bright  things  a  white  connoisseur  might  have  said  to 
a  novice. 

It  took  Rick  only  the  minimum  time  to  get  out  of  this  sort  of  thing, 
to  take  the  tune  for  granted  and  forget  it  in  favor  of  what  was  being  done 
for  it.  They  always  did  plenty  for  it  at  the  Cotton  Club.  The  variations 
were  the  real  matter,  not  the  theme.  What  happened  was  that  Rick,  the 
amateur's  apprentice,  sat  beside  the  amateur  himself  and  developed  his 
ear  to  ten  times  normal  capacity  by  the  simple  process  of  listening  with 
it.  They  sat  on  a  couple  of  upturned  boxes,  leaned  their  backs  against 
the  very  Cotton  Club,  and  listened.  Smoke  sometimes  beat  very  softly 
with  the  flat  of  his  hand  against  a  garbage-can  lid  that  had  got  out  of  place 


A  Number  of  Things  283 

somehow;  he  just  held  the  thing  on  his  lap  and  let  his  hands  fall  against 
it,  and  got,  as  he  invariably  did  whenever  he  let  his  hands  or  feet  fall 
against  anything,  some  very  effective  effects.  He  didn't  intrude  his  drum- 
ming. He  just  kept  the  lid  on  his  lap,  so  that  if  he  had  to  do  something 
about  it  he  could.  No  more  than  that;  you  couldn't  expect  less  from  so 
serious  a  drummer. 

Los  Angeles  weather  is  all  right.  Autumn  nights  stay  relatively  on  the 
balmy  side,  and  it  was  no  great  test  of  physical  courage  for  Messrs. 
Jordan  and  Martin  to  sit  night  after  night  behind  the  Cotton  Club  exposed 
to  the  Los  Angeles  elements.  It  was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  really  very  pleas- 
ant out  there.  A  beam  of  light  slanted  out  of  the  window  above  them 
and  made  a  sort  of  lean-to  for  them  to  sit  behind.  There  they  could  see 
each  other  perfectly  and  smoke  cigarettes,  not  cigars,  without  having  the 
not-quite-convinced  feeling  you  get  from  smoking  in  complete  darkness. 
And  yet  everything  was  nicely  toned  down.  For  their  purpose  they  were 
much  better  off  outside  than  they  would  have  been  inside.  Inside,  the  air 
was  enough  to  befuddle  you,  and  the  dancing  —  the  clientele  being  mostly 
Negro  with  a  light  mixture  of  Mexicans  and  Filipinos  —  was  distracting, 
a  whole  show  in  itself.  Inseparable  as  music  and  dancing  fundamentally 
must  be,  it  is  only  the  layman  who  prefers  to  dance  to,  rather  than  listen 
to,  really  good  jazz.  Good  jazz  has  so  much  going  on  inside  it  that  dancing 
to  it,  for  anybody  who  likes  the  music,  is  a  kind  of  dissipation.  Bach's 
"Brandenburgs"  would  make  good  dance  music,  but  nobody  dances  to 
them;  they  make  too-good  dance  music.  The  improvisations  of  Jeff  Wil- 
liams and  his  band  weren't  anybody's  Brandenburgs,  but  they  had  some- 
thing in  common  with  them,  a  kind  of  hard,  finished  brilliance.  .  .  . 

This  playing  style  is  worth  some  going  into.  Jeff's  band  didn't  play 
from  music,  though  they  could  all  read  music.  They  had  two  styles  of 
playing,  known  to  the  present  trade  as  Memphis  style  and  New  Orleans 
style.  The  difference  between  the  two  is  something  like  the  difference  be- 
tween the  two  styles  of  chow  mein:  in  one  you  get  the  noodles  and  the 
sauce  served  separately,  and  in  the  other  sauce  and  noodles  are  mixed 
before  they  are  served.  Likewise,  Memphis  style  is  sometimes  called  "take 
your  turn,"  and  New  Orleans  has  everybody  in  at  the  same  time.  In 
Memphis  the  theme  is  established  in  the  first  chorus,  and  then  each  man 
takes  a  separate  crack  at  a  variation  on  it.  This  system  has  the  advantage 
of  encouraging  competition  in  virtuosity.  It  was  a  point  of  honor  in  Jeff's 
band  for  each  man  to  get  more  into  his  chorus  than  his  predecessor  had  in 
his.  It  made  for  a  terrific  heightening  of  interest  on  the  part  of  the  players 
themselves,  and  it  left  Smoke  and  Rick,  the  impartial  unseen  judges, 
choking  with  the  excitement  of  the  chase. 

But  the  way  they  did  Memphis  was  just  child's  play  compared  to  the 
way  they  did  New  Orleans.  Here  they  were  all  in  on  it  from  start  to 
finish.  Each  man  went  his  separate  and  uncharted  way,  and  first  thing  you 
know  you  had  two  and  two  equaling  at  least  five.  They  achieved,  you 


284  The  Arch  of  Experience 

never  could  say  how,  a  highly  involved  counterpoint.  No  accidents, 
either,  because  they  did  it  on  tune  after  tune,  and  never  the  same  way 
twice.  Seek  out  the  separate  voices  and  you'd  find  each  one  doing  nicely, 
thanks,  and  then  let  your  ear  out  to  take  in  the  whole,  and  there  it  was. 
It  sounds  like  black  magic,  three  horns  and  a  piano  ad-libbing  a  fugue, 
and  not  only  that  but  fugue  after  fugue,  night  after  night,  except  Sunday. 

The  explanation  is  not  simple;  it's  as  hard  as  a  nice  explanation  of  what 
a  "sixth  sense"  is.  The  only  thing  you  could  say  is  that  in  this  case  it  was 
a  matter  of  esprit  de  corps.  Jeff  and  his  band  had  played  together  so 
much  and  so  long  that  they  had  developed  psychic  respones  to  each  other. 
They  were  a  team  using  signals  that  they  followed  perfectly  without  even 
knowing  that  they  had  any  signals.  They  knew  how  things  stood  from 
moment  to  moment  in  the  same  way  that  a  pianist's  right  hand  knows 
what  the  left's  doing.  Proper  co-ordination  established,  the  thing  just 
goes  along. 

Rick  thought  of  himself  as  a  pianist,  though  he  hadn't  seen  a  piano  close 
up  for  three  months;  and  three  months  before  "Adeste  Fideles,"  played 
adagio,  had  been  the  piece  de  resistance  of  his  entire  repertory.  When 
he  sat  outside  with  Smoke  behind  the  beam  of  light,  it  scarcely  ever  oc- 
curred to  him  that  he  couldn't,  if  opportunity  should  stick  out  its  forelock 
at  him,  go  right  in  there  and  sit  down  at  the  piano  and  play  exactly  the 
way  Jeff  Williams  played.  Come  to  think  about  ft,  I  believe  Rick  sort  of 
thought  he  was  Jeff  Williams.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  They  went  in.  It  was  a  big  place  with  about  forty  tables  and  a  fair- 
sized  floor  in  the  middle.  The  chairs  were  on  top  of  the  tables  now,  the 
way  they  always  put  chairs  on  tables,  one  right-side  up  supporting  an- 
other upside  down;  and  there  was  heavy  dust  in  the  air.  The  walls  were 
befouled  from  top  to  bottom  with  murals  that  showed  signs  of  having 
been  picked  up  after  somebody's  local  Beaux  Arts  Ball.  It  was  hard  to 
take  them  in  at  a  glance,  but  you  were  left  with  the  general  impression 
that  they  had  something  to  do  with  Hell.  Devils,  or  cuckolds,  with  tridents 
figured  prominently  in  Underworld  scenes,  classic  upper-case  Underworld, 
not  the  thing  the  newspapers  talk  about.  At  the  rear  of  the  room  was 
the  orchestra  shell,  very  shell-like,  fluted  along  the  upper  edge,  and  in  it 
sat  four  Negro  boys,  one  of  whom  yelled,  "It's  about  time,"  when  he  saw 
Rick  and  Smoke  and  Davis  come  in.  The  three  of  them  walked  up  together, 
and  Davis  unbuttoned  his  coat,  drew  forth  from  the  inside  of  his  belt  the 
fifth,  so-called,  of  gin,  and  set  it  at  the  feet  of  a  fellow  holding  a  horn. 

The  four  in  the  shell  were  glad  to  see  Smoke  and  made  a  lot  of  it.  They 
accused  him  of  this,  that,  and  even  of  the  other,  trying  to  find  out  why  he 
never  came  around  any  more;  and  Smoke  put  them  off  by  a  system  of 
grinning  at  the  right  time.  And  all  the  time  Rick  stood  there  trying  to 
look  unobtrusive,  but  standing  out,  just  by  the  force  of  his  contrasting 
color,  like  a  lighthouse. 

There  was  need  of  more  presentation,  and  this  time  Davis  did  it,  very 


A  Number  of  Things  285 

pleasantly  and  easily:  "Mr.  Martin,  I'd  like  you  to  meet  Mr.  Hazard  . 
Mr.  Snowden  .  .  .  Mr.  Ward  .  .  .  and  Mr.  Williams/'  Rick  smiled  at  them 
self-consciously  and  made  his  mouth  go,  but  not  fast  enough  to  say  "Frn 
glad  to  meet  you"  four  separate  times.  He  made  an  impression  on  them, 
though;  you  could  see  that.  I  suppose  part  of  it  was  that  he  always  looked 
somehow  like  a  rich  kid,  very  clean  and  with  expensive  pants  on.  He  was 
good-looking,  too,  on  his  own  hook.  He  had  blond,  slightly  curly  hair 
and  sharp  brownish  eyes.  Brownish,  not  brown.  In  terms  of  color,  Rick's 
eyes  were  scarcely  describable;  they  had  brightness  and  sharpness  more 
than  they  had  color.  They  burned  like  the  eyes  of  the  fevered  or  the 
fanatical,  with  a  deep,  purposeful  smoldering  that  will  get  out  of  hand  if 
you  don't  check  it  in  time. 

Rick  looked  at  them  one  by  one,  but  he  let  his  glance  slide  right  across 
Jeff  Williams.  There  he  was,  and  he  marked  him  for  later  inspection. 
No  need  to  stare  at  him  like  a  housewife  at  a  movie  actor;  not  right  now 
at  least,  full-face  and  in  the  presence  of  all.  Lots  of  time. 

Hazard,  the  trumpet  player,  picked  up  the  bottle  and  said  what  are  we 
waiting  for,  and  handed  it  to  Rick,  who  said  I  just  had  one,  and  handed  it 
on  to  Ward,  who  stood  on  the  other  side  of  him.  Nobody,  out  of  deference, 
I  suppose,  to  Rick,  said  anything  about  the  three  drinks  being  gone  out 
of  the  bottle.  They  handed  it  around  from  one  to  another  and  each  man 
drank  a  big  one  right  out  of  the  bottle  straight,  and  then  made  his  remark, 
usually  an  expression  of  mixed  pleasure  and  pain:  "God,  that's  lousy  stuff; 
I  wisht  I  had  a  barrel."  When  it  had  gone  around  except  for  Smoke  and 
Davis  and  Rick,  the  bottle  was  better  than  half  done  and  the  talk  was 
less  constrained.  The  one  that  was  Jeff  Williams  jumped  down  off  the  plat- 
form and  stood  in  front  of  Smoke  and  Rick,  and  said  to  Smoke,  "You  might 
as  well  live  someplace  else,  Dan,  all  I  see  of  you  any  more." 

"Yeah,  I  know  it,"  said  Smoke,  whose  right  name  appeared  to  be  Dan. 
"I  been  down  to  Gaudy's  nights,  mostly,  and  I  don't  like  to  take  a  chance 
on  waking  you  up  coining  in  in  the  daytime.  A  guy  works  as  hard  as  you 
needs  a  little  sleep." 

"Forget  it,"  Jeff  said,  and  looked  around  uncertainly.  He  was,  as  Smoke 
had  started  to  say  on  another  occasion,  a  handsome  fellow.  He  hadn't  said 
the  rest  of  it,  either,  that  Jeff  Williams  was  a  rare  type,  an  aquiline- 
featured  negro.  Three  shades  lighter,  he  could  have  passed  for  a  Castilian 
almost  anywhere. 

He  looked  now  at  his  men  and  said,  "Let's  be  getting  at  it."  Then  he 
turned  to  Rick  and  said,  "Where'd  you  like  to  sit?"  and  Smoke  answered 
for  him,  "Put  him  up  by  you;  he's  a  pianist." 

Jeff  jumped  back  up  on  the  platform,  shoved  the  piano  bench  down 
to  the  left,  and  motioned  to  Rick  to  sit  at  the  end  of  it,  down  by  the 
low  notes.  Rick  jumped  up  after  him,  very  lightly  and  with  a  certain 
show  of  athleticism,  walked  around  the  bench,  and  sat  down.  Jeff  turned 
to  him  and  said,  "I'd  just  about  as  soon  you  weren't  a  piano  player.  The 


286  The  Arch  of  Experience 

way  that  slug  of  gin  hit  me  I  couldn't  say  right  off  which  is  middle  C." 

"Neither  could  I,"  Rick  said,  "and  I'm  not  a  piano  player  anyhow;  Jordan 
just  said  that."  Faced  with  an  actual  piano,  all  Rick's  illusions,  so  carefully 
nurtured  by  constant  wish-thinking,  left  him  flat. 

Jeff  looked  at  him  hard,  as  if  to  find  out  for  himself  whether  Rick  was 
or  was  not  a  pianist,  and  then  he  said  to  him,  "What  shall  we  play?" 
And  without  a  second's  thought  Rick  said,  "Play  'Tin  Roof  Blues'  the  way 
you  do  it,  you  know,  when  you  take  the  second  chorus." 

"It's  good,  all  right,"  Jeff  said.  "Not  everybody  likes  it,  though."  He 
clenched  his  fists  tight  a  couple  or  three  times  before  he  touched  the  keys. 
Then  he  said  "Tin  Roof"  and  banged  his  heel  twice  on  the  floor:  one,  two, 
and  they  were  off. 

So  they  played  "Tin  Roof  Blues,"  and  there's  no  way  of  telling  how 
they  played  it.  You  can't  say  these  things;  the  way  to  know  what  hap- 
pens in  music  is  to  hear  it,  to  hear  it  from  the  inside  out  the  way  Rick 
heard  it  that  night  on  the  bench  beside  Jeff  Williams. 

When  it  was  over,  Jeff,  still  striking  chords,  said:  "How'd  you  know 
how  we  do  that?  How'd  you  know  I  take  the  second  chorus?  I've  never 
seen  you  in  here,  that  I  remember  of." 

And  Rick  said  he'd  never  been  inside  before,  but  he  always  happened 
to  be  passing  by  and  he'd  got  so  he  knew  how  they  did  things. 

"You  must  remember  pretty  good  to  know  who  comes  where.  I  don't 
hardly  know  myself." 

"Oh,  I  don't  remember  exactly,"  Rick  answered  with  that  dead  ring  of 
sincerity.  "I  just  get  so  I  can  sort  of  feel  when  it's  coming;  I  get  a  feeling 
that  there's  going  to  be  a  place  that  needs  some  piano  playing  in  it;  I  don't 
know." 

He  broke  it  off  there  and  gave  up  trying  to  say  how  it  was.  Jeff  turned 
from  the  waist  and  took  another  look  at  him.  "You  sure  you  don't  play 
piano?"  he  said.  "Something  about  the  way  you  talk  sounds  like  you  do." 
He  said  it  not  suspiciously,  but  deferentially,  as  if  he  felt  some  kind  of 
force  in  this  mild,  white  kid,  something  to  be  taken  seriously. 

The  bottle  was  going  around  again.  Ward,  the  drummer,  thrust  it  at 
Jeff,  and  Jeff  said  "Go  ahead,"  and  gave  it  to  Rick.  And  Rick,  who  was 
as  intuitive  as  a  woman  and  spontaneously  tactful  as  few  women  are,  took 
the  bottle  and  tilted  it  up  briefly  in  sign  that  he  was  drinking  with  them. 

Thanks,"  he  said  to  Jeff,  and  repeated  that  he  really  didn't  play  the 
piano,  that  he'd  started  to  try  to  teach  himself  and  that  he  was  doing  all 
right,  but  that  he  didn't  have  a  piano  any  more.  Dead  stop,  no  way  to  go 
on. 

"Tough,"  said  Jeff.   "Maybe  we  could  fix  you  up  somehow." 

"Oh,  I  don't  know  much  about  it,"  Rick  said  again.  "I  only  got  started. 
I  wasn't  playing  jazz,  anyhow.  It  was  some  other  kind  of  pieces." 

"Classical?"  said  Jeff.  "I  can't  see  classical  for  dust.  I  hear  them  playing 
it  every  once  in  a  while,  but  I  don't  know,  I  just  can't  see  it.  *Wrassle 
of  Spring.'  'Perfect  Day.'  No  damn  good.  The  trouble  with  classical, 


A  Number  of  Things  287 

nobody  plays  it  can  keep  time.  I  tried  to  teach  one  of  those  classical  fellows 
how  to  play  jazz  once,  and  I'm  telling  you  he  like  to  drove  me  crazy. 
No  matter  how  much  I'd  tell  him  he  couldn't  hold  a  note  and  fill  it  in.  No 
classical  players  can  do  it.  You  might  as  well  not  tell  them.  Hold  it  one 
beat,  hold  it  four,  they  don't  give  a  damn  if  they  hold  it  at  all." 

He  meant  it.  He  sat  there  with  the  bottle  in  his  hand,  talking  so  seriously 
that  he  forgot  to  drink  until  Hazard,  up  front,  noticed  that  the  bottle  was 
not  progressing  evenly  and  he  said,  "Hey,  Jeff!  What  you  got  in  your 
hand?"  And  then  Jeff  jerked  up  his  head  and  the  bottle,  drank  quickly, 
and  shoved  the  bottle  away  from  him  for  anybody  to  take.  Then  he  re- 
membered himself  and  turned  back  to  Rick  to  say: 

"Don't  get  the  idea  I'm  saying  you're  like  that.  I  didn't  mean  it  that 
way;  I  just  got  to  thinking." 

"I  wasn't  playing  classical,"  Rick  said.  "I  was  only  playing  around  try- 
ing to  learn  the  notes;  just  practicing  by  myself.  Hell,  I  wouldn't  play 
classical;  I'd  play  jazz." 

Somebody  said,  "Well,  are  we  going  to  play?"  and  again  Jeff  turned  to 
Rick  and  said  "What'll  it  be?"  and  Rick  pulled  out  his  second  choice: 
"Would  you  wanta  play  'Dead  Man  Blues'  all  together  the  way  you  were 
doing  it  Saturday  night?" 

"Dead  Man,"  said  Jeff,  and  banged  his  heel  down  twice,  one,  two, 
action  suited  to  word. 

Jeff  led  them  to  it  with  four  bars  in  the  key,  and  then  the  three  horns 
came  in  together,  held  lightly  to  a  slim  melody  by  three  separate  leashes. 
Then  Jeff  left  the  rhythm  to  the  drums,  and  the  piano  became  the  fourth 
voice,  and  from  then  on  harmony  prevailed  in  strange  coherence,  each 
man  improvising  wildly  on  his  own  and  the  four  of  them  managing  to  fit 
it  together  and  tightly.  Feeling  ran  high,  and  happy  inspiration  followed 
happy  inspiration  to  produce  counterpoint  that  you'd  swear  somebody  had 
sat  down  and  worked  out  note  by  note  on  nice  clean  manuscript  paper. 
But  nobody  had;  it  came  into  the  heads  of  four  men  and  out  again  by 
way  of  three  horns  and  one  piano. 

Rick,  at  the  bass  end  of  the  piano,  caught  the  eye  of  Smoke  Jordan,  who 
was  squatting  on  his  heels  just  barely  out  of  the  way  of  George  Ward 
the  drummer.  Smoke  nodded,  a  happy  nod  of  confirmation,  as  one  would 
say,  yes,  they're  good  all  right;  they  always  were.  But  Rick  only  shook  his 
head  slowly  from  side  to  side  in  a  gesture  of  abject  wonderment  which 
meant  to  say,  how  can  anybody  be  so  good?  What  makes  it?  Then  Smoke's 
face  was  lost  to  him,  cut  off  by  the  cymbal  that  Ward  had  just  knocked 
swinging,  and  he  turned  his  eyes  back  to  Jeff's  hands  on  the  black  and 
white  keyboard.  He  played  with  his  wrists  high  and  his  fingers  curved 
halfway  around,  and  he  pecked  at  those  keys  like  a  chicken  going  for  corn. 
He  flicked  each  note  out  clear  and  fast,  and  he  couldn't  have  fallen  into 
an  empty  cadenza  if  he'd  tried.  His  hands  were  built  to  pick,  not  to  ripple, 
and  they  inevitably  shaped  out  a  style  that  was  torrid,  not  florid. 

Rick  watched  the  hands  the  way  a  kitten  watches  a  jumpy  reflection  on 


288  The  Arch  of  Experience 

a  carpet.  And  when  "Dead  Man"  was  played  out,  he  pushed  his  hand 
across  his  forehead  and  said  whew,  or  one  of  those  happy,  exhausted 
sounds.  The  three  instrumentalists  up  front  turned  around  for  approbation 
from  Rick,  and  got  it,  not  from  anything  he  said,  but  just  from  the  look 
on  his  face.  Smoke  got  up  off  his  heels  and  then  went  down  again  without 
saying  anything.  Ward  looked  at  him  and  said,  "You  want  to  take  the 
drums  awhile,  Dan?" 

Smoke  got  up  fast  and  said:  "Sure,  I  don't  care.  If  you  want  me  to, 
I'd  just  as  soon  take  them  for  a  while."  And  when  Ward  got  up,  Smoke  was 
in  his  chair  like  a  flash  and  had  his  foot  on  the  pedal,  and  began  tapping 
the  snare  lightly  with  his  forefinger.  He  looked  into  the  basket  of  sticks 
that  hung  beside  Ward's  chair,  picked  a  couple,  and  measured  them  up 
automatically.  Then  he  looked  with  raised  eyebrows  at  Jeff  and  Jeff  said, 
"I  suppose  you  want  it  slow?"  "Well,"  Smoke  said,  "If  it's  gonna  be  good, 
it  must  be  slow."  And  Jeff  answered  back:  "You  hear  some  of  them  say  it 
the  other  way:  If  it's  gonna  be  good,  it  must  be  fast.'  Why  you  like  it  slow 
is  so  you  can  go  into  double  time  any  time  you  feel  like  it.  That's  not 
slow,  that's  fast."  He  turned  to  Rick  and  grinned  and  said:  "That's  a  fact. 
He  wants  everybody  else  to  play  slow,  so  he  can  play  fast.  Crazy  son  of  a 
gun,  the  only  thing  in  this  world  he  wants  to  do  is  tear  into  double  time 
on  a  slow  piece."  He  thought  it  over  and  said,  "He  holds  it  slow  good 
too."  Then  he  turned  away  from  Rick  and  said  to  Smoke,  "All  right,  you 
stamp  it  off,  yourself,  and  well  play  'Ida,'  huh?"  And  Smoky  very  willingly 
beat  it  out,  one,  two,  with  the  foot  pedal;  really  slow:  one  .  .  .  two  .  .  . 

The  rest  of  them  knew  whose  turn  it  was,  and  they  settled  down  to  a 
low,  smooth  tune  and  put  their  minds  to  breaking  up  chords  in  peculiar, 
unorthodox  harmonies.  At  every  whole  note  they  broke  off  sharp  and  let 
Smoke  have  it  to  fill  in  any  way  he  wanted  it,  the  way  vaudeville  bands 
used  to  play  it  for  tap  dancers. 

Smoke  had  the  thing  under  control  all  the  way  through.  He  didn't 
pay  much  attention  to  the  snare  —  he  could  play  a  snare  any  time  he 
wanted  to.  He  played  the  bass  direct  with  padded  sticks  and  kept  it 
quiet  but  very  clear,  a  deep  washboard  rhythm  with  constantly  shifting 
emphasis.  And  to  vary  it  further  he  played  the  basic  beat  with  the  pedal 
and  went  into  double  time  on  the  cymbal,  playing  one-handed  and  holding 
the  edge  of  the  cymbal  with  the  other  hand  to  steady  it  and  mute  the 
tone.  He  was  tearing  it  up  so  well  —  and  everybody  knew  it  —  that  the 
band  simply  quit  for  sixteen  bars  and  let  him  work;  and  he  stayed  right 
there  double-timing  one-handed  on  the  cymbal  and  never  repeating  him- 
self, keeping  it  sharp  and  precise  and  making  it  break  just  right  for  him. 
He  played  a  drum  the  way  Bill  Robinson  dances,  never  at  a  loss  for  a  new 
pattern,  but  always  holding  it  down  and  keeping  it  clean. 

When  it  was  over,  Jeff  said,  "Anyhow  you  didn't  go  soft  while  youVe 
been  away."  Smoke  didn't  hear  him;  he  was  talking  to  George  Ward,  and 
so  Jeff  said  to  Rick,  "If  that  horse  would  get  off  the  dime  and  get  him  a 
decent  set  of  traps  there  wouldn't  be  a  better  man  in  the  business." 


A  Number  of  Things  289 

"I  know,"  said  Rick. 

"But  he  can't  ever  seem  to  get  organized,"  Jeff  went  on.  "He's  all  the 
time  sticking  around  home  playing  ball  with  the  kids  on  the  street,  or  else 
just  hanging  around  home  talking  to  his  folks,  or  else  just  hanging  around 
town.  He  never  stays  on  a  job  more  than  a  week/' 

He  sat  there  hitting  chords  and  scowling  at  the  keyboard  while  he  talked. 
"I  sure  do  wish  something  would  get  him  jarred  loose.  Every  time  I  hear 
him  play  it  gets  me  sort  of  sore  he  won't  do  anything  about  it.  Seems  like 
he  won't  grow  up  and  get  onto  himself." 

This  was  the  first  time  it  had  ever  been  given  to  Rick  to  know  the 
pleasure  of  confidential  talk,  and  it  had  him  glowing.  He  looked  at  Jeff 
and  made  answer;  Smoke,  he  said,  at  least  had  music  on  his  mind  all 
the  time;  he  knew  that  from  working  with  him. 

'Then  he's  working,"  Jeff  said.    "I  didn't  know  that." 

"Well,  not  exactly  a  regular  job,"  Rick  said.  "He  helps  out  at  Candy's 
where  I  work.  The  pool  hall." 

Jeff  looked  at  him  again  and  said:  "That  must  be  where  I've  seen  you, 
I  guess.  All  night  I  been  trying  to  think  where." 

"It's  not  such  a  very  good  job,"  Rick  said,  "but  Tin  trying  to  make  enough 
money  to  get  a  trumpet,  now  I  haven't  got  a  piano  any  more." 

"I  don't  see  why  you  couldn't  use  this  piano,  if  you  want  to,"  Jeff  said. 
"I've  got  a  key  to  the  hall  and  there's  never  anybody  here  in  the  day.  I 
bet  nobody's  ever  here  before  five." 

Rick  said  he  couldn't  do  that  and  put  everybody  to  such  a  lot  of  trouble 
and  everything.  But  after  that  he  said  a  thing  that  he  had  no  intention  of 
saying.  He  said,  "You  don't  ever  give  piano  lessons,  do  you,  like  a  piano 
teacher?" 

The  four  in  front  were  playing  alone,  trying  things  out,  and  letting 
Jeff  and  Rick  talk.  Ward  stood  over  his  drums,  watching  Smoke  play  them. 

"No,"  Jeff  said.  "I  couldn't  teach  piano.  I  taught  my  brother  a  thing  or 
two,  but  he'd  have  learned  it  anyhow." 

He  stopped  a  minute,  thinking  about  it  and  then  he  said,  "But  I  guess  I 
could  show  you  some  things  about  it,  if  you'd  like  me  to." 

"I'd  pay  whatever  you  charge,"  Rick  said  in  the  big  way  he  had. 

"I  wouldn't  want  to  do  that,"  Jeff  said.  "I  couldn't  teach  you  anything, 
just  show  you  how  it  goes,  if  you'd  like  me  to." 

"Well,  I'd  sure  appreciate  it,"  Rick  said.  It  sounded  pretty  lame;  all  the 
social  courtesy  had  got  away  from  him. 

Somebody  looked  around  and  Jeff  said,  "Play  that  thing  you  were  just 
playing  again;  sounded  good."  And  Smoke  said  a  thing  that  was  hard  to 
say;  he  said,  "Take  your  drums,"  and  got  up  from  Ward's  chair.  "Don't 
you  want  to  play  them  any  more?"  Ward  said,  but  he  said  it  in  a  way  that 
cut  off  all  possibility  of  an  affirmative  reply.  Then  Jeff  gave  them  the  beat 
and  they  played  again,  and  then  again  and  again.  Rick  stayed  right  there 
on  the  piano  bench  beside  Jeff,  but  he  didn't  limit  his  ears  to  Jeff's  piano; 
he  concentrated  more  and  more  on  the  way  Hazard  was  doing  the  trumpet 


290  The  Arch  of  Experience 

work.  It  may  have  been  the  gin;  something  had  him  fixed  up  so  that  he 
was  playing  constantly  right  up  to  the  place  where  genius  and  madness 
grapple  before  going  their  separate  ways.  It  was  Hazard's  night.  Even 
ten  years  later,  when  he  knew  what  he  was  talking  about,  Rick  said  that 
he'd  never  afterward  heard  Hazard  himself  or  anybody  else  play  a  horn  the 
way  Hazard  played  that  night. 

There  wasn't  much  more  talk.  They  played  one  tune  after  another.  As 
soon  as  they'd  pull  one  through  to  the  end,  somebody  would  call  out  an- 
other and  they'd  be  off  again.  The  bottle  went  around  only  once  more,  a 
very  short  one  for  everybody,  and  Rick  only  going  through  the  motions. 
The  gin  didn't  really  affect  them  much;  they  were  young  and  so  healthy 
that  no  toxin  could  bite  into  them.  But  it  gave  them  the  feeling  that  they 
could  push  out  farther  than  usual,  and  so  they  did. 

They  began  to  weaken  a  little  when  the  hall  started  to  turn  gray  with 
morning  light.  When  Hazard  saw  it  he  said  "My  God,"  shook  his  trumpet, 
and  put  it  in  the  case.  The  rest  of  them  got  up,  one  after  another,  stiff- 
legged  and  bewildered.  Jeff,  folding  down  the  keyboard  cover,  said, 
"Looks  like  it  sort  of  got  late  on  us."  Rick  looked  at  him  and  said,  "It's 
been,"  but  he  didn't  say  what  it  had  been.  He  very  evidently  needed  a 
word  that  he  didn't  have  with  him,  and  so  he  only  shook  his  head  in  that 
wondering  way  he  had,  and  it  turned  out  to  mean  the  thing  he  wanted  to 
say. 

Hazard  and  Davis  gave  the  bunch  a  general  good  night  and  left  to- 
gether, the  first  out.  Then  Ward  and  Snowden  came  up  to  Rick  and  said 
good  night,  and  not  only  that  but  come  around  again  some  time. 

And  then  there  were  only  the  three  of  them,  Smoke,  Jeff,  and  Rick.  They 
walked  out  together  and  stood  by  the  back  door  while  Jeff  locked  up. 
Rick,  who  was  picking  up  a  feeling  for  night  life  faster  than  you'd  think, 
said:  "Let's  go  someplace  and  have  some  breakfast  before  we  go  home.  I 
don't  have  to  go  to  work  until  one." 

"Can't  do  it,"  Jeff  said;  "I  got  to  get  me  some  sleep." 

"How  about  you?*'  Rick  said  to  Smoke.  And  Smoke  tightened  his  belt 
with  a  large,  carefree  gesture  and  said,  "Don't  care  if  I  do." 

So  they  parted  company  with  Jeff  Williams,  but  not  before  he  and  Rick 
had  arranged  to  meet  at  the  Cotton  Club  the  next  Sunday  to  talk  over 
problems  connected  with  playing  the  piano. 


from  Song  of  Myself 

Walt  Whitman  •  I8i9~i892 

The  "Self  is  not  some  mysterious  entity  which  arrives  in  the 
world  with  you  as  does  your  nose  or  your  right  thumb.  It  is  something 
which  is  made  out  of  the  welter  of  your  experiences.  Even  a  catalogue 
of  happy  moments,  sad  moments,  embarrassing  moments,  thrilling  mo- 
ments is  useful  to  us  in  ordering  our  lives.  Similarly  useful  is  a  journal 
or  a  diary.  Here  Walt  Whitman  has  listed  a  large  number  of  American 
experiences  which  struck  his  imagination.  Any  one  of  these  could  be 
the  subject  of  a  theme,  a  short  story,  a  novel.  Surely  you  can  construct 
a  similar  catalogue,  which  might  serve  as  a  source  book  for  themes 
during  the  year. 

8 

THE  LITTLE  ONE  sleeps  in  its  cradle, 

I  lift  the  gauze  and  look  a  long  time,  and  silently  brush  away  flies  with  my 
hand. 

The  youngster  and  the  red-faced  girl  turn  aside  up  the  bushy  hill, 
I  peeringly  view  them  from  the  top. 

The  suicide  sprawls  on  the  bloody  floor  of  the  bedroom, 

I  witness  the  corpse  with  its  dabbled  hair,  I  note  where  the  pistol  has  fallen. 

The  blab  of  the  pave,  tires  of  carts,  sluff  of  boot-soles,  talk  of  the  prome- 

naders, 
The  heavy  omnibus,  the  driver  with  his  interrogating  thumb,  the  clank  of 

the  shod  horses  on  the  granite  floor, 

The  snow-sleighs,  clinking,  shouted  jokes,  pelts  of  snow-balls, 
The  hurrahs  for  popular  favorites,  the  fury  of  rous'd  mobs, 
The  flap  of  the  curtain'd  litter,  a  sick  man  inside  borne  to  the  hospital, 
The  meeting  of  enemies,  the  sudden  oath,  the  blows  and  fall, 
The  excited  crowd,  the  policeman  with  his  star  quickly  working  his  pas- 
sage to  the  centre  of  the  crowd, 

The  impassive  stones  that  receive  and  return  so  many  echoes, 
What  groans  of  over-fed  or  half-starv'd  who  fall  sunstruck  or  in  fits, 
What  exclamations  of  women  taken  suddenly  who  hurry  home  and  give 

birth  to  babes, 
What  living  and  buried  speech  is  always  vibrating  here,  what  howls  re- 

strain'd  by  decorum, 
Arrests  of  criminals,  slights,  adulterous  offers  made,  acceptances,  rejections 

with  convex  lips, 

I  mind  them  or  the  show  or  resonance  of  them  —  I  come  and  I  depart. 

291 


292  The  Arch  of  Experience 

9 

The  doors  of  the  country  barn  stand  open  and  ready, 
The  dried  grass  of  the  harvest-time  loads  the  slow-drawn  wagon, 
The  clear  light  plays  on  the  brown  gray  and  green  intertinged, 
The  armfuls  are  pack'd  to  the  sagging  mow. 

I  am  there,  I  help,  I  came  stretch'd  atop  of  the  load, 

I  felt  its  soft  jolts,  one  leg  reclined  on  the  other, 

I  jump  from  the  cross-beams  and  seize  the  clover  and  timothy, 

And  roll  head  over  heels  and  tangle  my  hair  full  of  wisps. 

10 

Alone  far  in  the  wilds  and  mountains  I  hunt, 
Wandering  amazed  at  my  own  lightness  and  glee, 
In  the  late  afternoon  choosing  a  safe  spot  to  pass  the  night, 
Kindling  a  fire  and  broiling  the  fresh-kill'd  game, 
Falling  asleep  on  the  gather'd  leaves  with  my  dog  and  gun  by  my  side. 

The  Yankee  clipper  is  under  her  sky-sails,  she  cuts  the  sparkle  and  scud, 
My  eyes  settle  the  land,  I  bend  at  her  prow  or  shout  joyously  from  the 
deck. 

The  boatmen  and  clam-diggers  arose  early  and  stopt  for  me, 

I  tuck'd  my  trowser-ends  in  my  boots  and  went  and  had  a  good  time; 

You  should  have  been  with  us  that  day  round  the  chowder-kettle. 

I  saw  the  marriage  of  the  trapper  in  the  open  air  in  the  far  west,  the  bride 
was  a  red  girl, 

Her  father  and  his  friends  sat  near  cross-legged  and  dumbly  smoking,  they 
had  moccasins  to  their  feet  and  large  thick  blankets  hanging  from 
their  shoulders, 

On  a  bank  lounged  the  trapper,  he  was  drest  mostly  in  skins,  his  luxuriant 
beard  and  curls  protected  his  neck,  he  held  his  bride  by  the  hand, 

She  had  long  eyelashes,  her  head  was  bare,  her  coarse  straight  locks  de- 
scended upon  her  voluptuous  limbs  and  reach'd  to  her  feet. 

The  runaway  slave  came  to  my  house  and  stopt  outside, 

I  heard  his  motions  crackling  the  twigs  of  the  woodpile, 

Through  the  swung  half-door  of  the  kitchen  I  saw  him  limpsy  and  weak, 

And  went  where  he  sat  on  a  log  and  led  him  in  and  assured  him, 

And  brought  water  and  fill'd  a  tub  for  his  sweated  body  and  bruis'd  feet, 

And  gave  him  a  room  that  enter'd  from  my  own,  and  gave  him  some  coarse 

clean  clothes, 

And  remember  perfectly  well  his  revolving  eyes  and  his  awkwardness, 
And  remember  putting  plasters  on  the  galls  of  his  neck  and  ankles; 


A  Number  of  Things  293 

He  staid  with  me  a  week  before  he  was  recuperated  and  pass'd  north, 
I  had  him  sit  next  me  at  table,  my  fire-lock  lean'd  in  the  corner. 

15 

The  pure  contralto  sings  in  the  organ  loft, 
The  carpenter  dresses  his  plank,  the  tongue  of  his  foreplane  whistles  its 

wild  ascending  lisp, 
The  married  and  unmarried  children  ride  home  to  their  Thanksgiving 

dinner, 

The  pilot  seizes  the  king-pin,  he  heaves  down  with  a  strong  arm, 
The  mate  stands  braced  in  the  whale-boat,  lance  and  harpoon  are  ready, 
The  duck-shooter  walks  by  silent  and  cautious  stretches, 
The  deacons  are  ordain'd  with  cross'd  hands  at  the  altar, 
The  spinning-girl  retreats  and  advances  to  the  hum  of  the  big  wheel, 
The  farmer  stops  by  the  bars  as  he  walks  on  a  First-day  loaf  and  looks  at 

the  oats  and  rye, 

The  lunatic  is  carried  at  last  to  the  asylum  a  confirm'd  case, 
(He  will  never  sleep  any  more  as  he  did  in  the  cot  in  his  mother's  bed- 
room; ) 

The  jour  printer  with  gray  head  and  gaunt  jaws  works  at  his  case, 
He  turns  his  quid  of  tobacco  while  his  eyes  blur  with  the  manuscript; 
The  malform'd  limbs  are  tied  to  the  surgeon's  table, 
What  is  removed  drops  horribly  in  a  pail; 
The  quadroon  girl  is  sold  at  the  auction-stand,  the  drunkard  nods  by  the 

bar-room  stove, 

The  machinist  rolls  up  his  sleeves,  the  policeman  travels  his  beat,  the  gate- 
keeper marks  who  pass, 
The  young  fellow  drives  the  express-wagon,  (I  love  him,  though  I  do  not 

know  him;) 

The  half-breed  straps  on  his  light  boots  to  compete  in  the  race, 
The  western  turkey-shooting  draws  old  and  young,  some  lean  on  their 

rifles,  some  sit  on  logs, 

Out  from  the  crowd  steps  the  marksman,  takes  his  position,  levels  his  piece; 
The  groups  of  newly-come  immigrants  cover  the  wharf  or  levee, 
As  the  woolly-pates  hoe  in  the  sugar-field,  the  overseer  views  them  from 

his  saddle, 
The  bugle  calls  in  the  ball-room,  the  gentlemen  run  for  their  partners,  the 

dancers  bow  to  each  other, 
The  youth  lies  awake  in  the  cedar-roof'd  garret  and  harks  to  the  musical 

rain, 

The